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Editor's Choice of Poems
I WISH THAT I COULD FIND A PLACE .... written by Randy Kautto
I wish that I could find a place...
A place where I could heal and regain faith in myself, and again feel the joy and happiness that I so long ago lost - displaced by despair and hopelessness.
A place where my friends live, if only for awhile, for I sorely need to belong...where I am accepted without judgment, and where I...
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THE TIME THAT I WATCHED OVER ME, written by Randy Kautto
What a time...lost in Vietnam...
lost in Hell...lost in war.
Each day...everyday...I watched over me...delivering me back to Bien Hoa after flying combat missions.
Why me?...Why not God?
Why was I watching over me?...Why not Him?
At night...when peace was earned and expected...they shot rockets...and woke us up...and made me cry. I watched over me. From under my bunker. With my M-16 and my sidearm....
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Brothers In Arms
At the Viet Nam Memorial Wall:
Brothers in Arms
To my brothers in arms, named here on the wall
And to those fallen since, who also gave all
It’s been a long journey here of almost twenty seven years,
Of running from the hurt and running from the tears.
I tried to forget, but the pain was too great
I ran from the anger, the guilt and...
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Day Dream
Day Dream
I stand where ancients once stood.
Now there are short, spiney-leaved plants,
A few replanted trees and barren earth.
Long ago I stood among ancients,
one hundred, two hundred even three hundred years old.
I looked in awe at their massive girth
And the shade they afforded.
God’s beauty even in the midst of this crazy war.
No undergrowth on the jungle floor
Just the whisperings...
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Dare One Say,
Dare One Say,
“No More War!”
By John-Robert Coleman
Soldier
You are not alone.
I’ve been here too.
There is only one life to share,
Your life is worth saving.
On the front-line one may be timid and scared
For it is this guilt one hides inside
This masked bandit we call “war.”
Yet one can simply choose,
“No more war!”
Dare you walk through this door?
The...
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Agony
Agony 03.05.04
Late day walking on the shore lost
In the absence of thought
The dogs surprise you in their normal behavior
Of investigating every flotsam and dead sea thing nose-first
By jumping back suddenly from a blackened driftwood tree form.
The way they sniff close then jump back makes you think the charred thing is still smoldering, left over from some dark of...
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Honor
You hear the broken cry in the wild
It is your own
Your stolen being - held hostage by war
...and yet...
You salvage my splintered soul
Generations smashed under the sins of our fathers
I see His face in your sacred scar
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Dad
I finger the medals on your uniform and ask if they can be mine some day
Crawling into bed with my mother I breathe in your pillow, sucking up the scent of strength
I listen as you shave the face that is now yours - jagged, sharp, glacier angles
You will be here in this moment and gone the next
I will not be...
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Pope Air Force Base
When my father came home from Vietnam
I wanted a doll
one dressed in colorful costume
message of a far-flung culture
I loved those dolls, loved
to touch their storied fabrics
I loved to hold each country’s name on my tongue
Scotland Germany Thailand the Philippines
When my father came home from Vietnam
he brought my mother a black...
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Engagement
Are you still there?
You are still here.
It is February 24, 2023
and on this date,
as with the others between then and now,
I have anniversary thoughts of you.
You paused from your digging
as the helicopter swirled a hole
through the oily haze of your cramped horizon,
and through the cold, engagement-ring sights of my M-60
we became one.
We married that day, in passing,
as...
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Forgotten Sorrows: A Letter to Pete S.
Pete: I feel like a fallen buddy left in the brush after an ambush.
My insides, gangrenous and rotting from a gut shot,
hold only the echo of a fragile prayer, “please . . .”
You are a veteran of another war. Yet you still scoff,
telling me how easy I had it, and asking me if I “had fun.”
Why can’t you see that...
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Memorial Day
The newspapers call him a hero,
The veterans just mutter "he's dead,"
A nice boy, he wanted some action,
It seems that he found out instead,
That war isn't action it's horror,
It's folly in shades of dry sand,
Are you ready to take what it offers,
Are you ready to meet its demand?
Here they come all you flag-waving small towns,
A steady parade, welcome home,
Let the etchings...
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Will I miss you?
As the early morning sun cascades over the grass I sense the beginning of something new, while watching the mist form.
In the distant you hear the sound of people moving about, cars starting, kids being kids, each of these remind me of you. I feel the movement, yet I see you not; for it is like the mist...
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Mike One Bush
Dawn thumbs nights crust
Light eases grey toward blue
we awake alive
wet and thankfully cold
smiling at the sun
we lay in the bushes
waiting
like a beast ready to leap
waiting again, for fear
to stuff the sun
behind the mountain
waiting, waiting
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This War
Shells start to drop
into personal hells
It is cold tonight
Numbed by the frost
I hobble to the dugout
where my compadre waits for me
This War is built strong
on a foundation of lies
But in an explosion
of Madness and Violence
the dugout collapses
My compadre dies
and This War lives on
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American Fear, by Hannah Lott
American Fear. It’s what keeps us awake at night,
sweating, panicking, afraid. It’s why we watch the
news, so we can think we are educated. it’s what
drives us to kill each other or ourselves, it makes
us act in ways we normally wouldn't. We can’t deny we
all have it. We can try to hide it, or try to take hold
of it, but It...
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At the Master's Grave
Thich Quang Duc Memorial
Saigon, Viet Nam
when
I
burn
let
me
sit