Comments on: When you go to the wall, / You can feel all the heat of that cool decade

When you go to the wall, / You can feel all the heat of that cool decade

orthogonality — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:56:20 -0800

"Next, have those who lost legs crawl forward and neatly/ stack them. Then bowl the skull of your best killed buddy/ down the aisle / Finally, have the blind push the quadruplegics forward / (they will have knives in their teeth to give to the legislators / to use on themselves). We leave."

Or: "Today you reached retirement/ with a disturbed and primal conscience / .... / Drunk and stoned, down in your worst / moment, you subpoenaed yourself / into believing the mission / was more important than the man."

Or: "Terrified, by the death grins. / Afraid, I'll be one of the dead. / Wondering, why did I ever think, / it wouldn't be as bad as they said?"

Soldiers' stories told in the veterans' poetry, from the archives of the Viet Nam Generation Journal.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:07:31 -0800

Our Fourth LT

When that LT got wasted, just about cut in half, we spoke of him, had a toke for him, smilingly remembering when he told the general, "Sir, I have come to consider my primary mission in Vietnam to be to get my own young ass and those of my men the fuck out of here, alive. It just happened that this time the Army's mission and mine, coincided. . . . .

I know our standard practice here is to compete to see who can show the most withering contempt or cleverest snark or jaded cynicism or disgusted complaint that the FPP is "teh worst EVAR!1!eleventy1!", but for this thread I encourage you to read some of the poetry archive, find a poem that speaks to you, and post its most telling lines here, with a link back to the whole poem.

By: adamvasco

adamvasco — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:50:52 -0800

Dulce et Decorum Est 1917 Wilfred Owen.

By: adamvasco

adamvasco — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:52:55 -0800

Interesting Links. Thank You.

By: kyleg

kyleg — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 01:50:43 -0800

Fantastic archive of stuff there. I'll be reading for hours. from A Dream of Two Wars, by Jerry Gold If the purpose of my dream was to reconstruct my past in such a way that I could accept it, was the nightmare also one of a collective kind? Are we revising our history in order to mythologize it, to make it into something that portrays us as we would like to see ourselves? "We could have won in Viet Nam if we had been allowed to fight." "We are a kinder, gentler people...." This myth, I think, has propelled us into the desert. It is a myth become hypothesis: we are testing it, to determine if it is the right myth, the one that will tell us that we are a righteous and invincible people once again. About one thing President Bush and his Defense Department spokesmen are right: the Persian Gulf is not Viet Nam. But we are in the Persian Gulf because we were in Viet Nam. January 1992. It always comes back around, doesn't it?

By: zaelic

zaelic — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 02:57:00 -0800

The last line of the first linked poem: PS. Save the instructions for your grandkids. They'll come in handy. Very good reading.

By: hardcode

hardcode — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 04:40:54 -0800

The General and The Kiss by Siegfried Sasson

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 04:41:04 -0800

I thought kill ratio, though not the best poem I have read on the site, is one of the most powerful comments on war in general and its inherent stupidity...

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 05:35:14 -0800

Great post. I was going to quote the same line zaelic did (me, I would have used it for the title of the post, but yours is good too), so I'll quote this instead:

I hate every fucking one of you who make dollars from our deaths. I hate every fucking one of you for my friends' dying breaths. I hate every fucking one of you, banker or corporation head. I hate every fucking one of you for so many, so young, and dead. I hate every fucking one of you with your pin-striped, dark blue suits. I hate every fucking one of you for all those empty boots.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:19:47 -0800

languagehat writes "me, I would have used it for the title of the post" Yeah, I like that line too, but in this post I want to emphasize the excellent poetry and the loss (of life, of innocence, of trust, etc.), rather than letting it be swamped by the (merely political) anger. Of course this post was ultimately motivated my the 3rd anniversary of the current war, but proximately I got here via Shakespeare's Henry V, Southey's Old Kaspar, and Wilfred Owen's repudiation of Horace, and I don't want to emphasize the partisan anger. Let the reader feel the loss, and then let him understand where the anger is born.

By: jikel_morten

jikel_morten — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:12:21 -0800

I am the living death The memorial day on wheels I am your yankee doodle dandy Your John Wayne come home Your Fourth of July firecracker Exploding in the grave -- Ron Kovic

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:12:36 -0800

Good point. You chose well.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:58:53 -0800

Terrific stuff. Horace Coleman seems like e.e. cummings with a muchharder life.

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:32:21 -0800

IN HIS FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS Having slapped a machete, then a rock, from his hand, I pushed the young boy at gunpoint toward the other villagers, away from the still form of his father. Mere words were all I left with which he could fight. "Someday, GI, mebbe you die!" The B-40 shrapnel that weeks later tore into me, hit no harder. .

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:32:35 -0800

I don't suppose I'll ever forget the guy in the Vet Center who'd started dreaming about those hootches he used to crawl into in the dark and cut throats and the visits he gets when the President passes through town and the "mystery" babies people's old ladies kept having and the divorce papers they'd get after she'd moved, sold the house, and bought a new car and the way that peckerwood was almost too ashamed to say "Thanks" after I'd saved his life or the parties where everybody brought a fifth and nobody left till all the soldiers were dead and ol' Bear wanting to shoot the lieutenant (which wasn't a bad idea but he was too nice a kid to have to do the time) so I took it away from him or the night they brought the VC in (labor detail on their way to the Chieu Hoi Center for some R&R) and nobody told us they were coming so the bolts going back on the 16s sounded like a cricket convention as I scoped the skinny fuckers out real good and not one came up to my shoulder or had any real meat on him and I could have punched them all out real easy and they looked just like the hired help but they weren't scared and just kept watching me watching them until one laughed and put a V of fingers and then a thumb and forefinger to his mouth so I tossed them a canteen and some Say- Lems and we all smoked and I didn't even ask for the pack back

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:59:31 -0800

I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. --"Facing It," Yusef Komunyakka

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:05:26 -0800

I was relieved we had done the right thing after having done something wrong, sorry for our mistake, more honest diplomats than the diplomats. (Emphasis mine) Not technically the best poetry I've read from the link, but that concept really stirs me in the same way this did when I first learned about it as a kid. I'd imagine it's too often the case in war that those on the ground make better diplomats than those far removed but holding the official positions, but I've never been and I don't know.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:30:04 -0800

"It's a shame," my father says, Climbing the back steps, "You didn't get to serve In a real War."

By: etaoin

etaoin — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:37:35 -0800

God, these poems are devastating. Heartbreaking. Thank you for posting.