Memorial Day poetry.. I was only 19…


 I was just nineteen….

15,000 day ago, he was a soldier.

He learn the soldier’s minute, fight or die?

kill or run?

Young man thought he was saving his world,

he came home, was called a baby-killer at the airport, returning home.

He tried to hide his  ugly face, he show fake face to his world,

rarely showing real face.  No-one want to listen to a crazed man.

The old man told me, I am alone.

I don’t like no-one and I receive 100% disability from the Army.

He told me, I lost my youth to Vietnam, lost dear wife to bad dreams and anger outburst.

I lost my buddies in the Asia dirt.

I tried to talk to him and he looked at me and he whispered to me. Too late to talk about it, too

late to thank me for my service. I became what I am. No-one want to befriend a bastard, left behind

and forgotten.

I left him be. I understand his story. My father waited forty years to receive a ribbon for the Korea war. He did appreciate. Today the Vietnam vets are showing their colors, maybe the “Thank you” is too late to have any meaning.

                         Dancing Coyote