Tore like a bad dream across my broken and bleeding lips.

Giving rise to repressed times and forgotten bad dreams

Oh ride captain ride, my deluded mind screams.

Oh captain, oh captain it is to you I do plead,

take me now upon your mystery ship and give me my peace,

For it was 1970 once again

And we were fighting for a cause we wouldn’t win.

So ride captain ride just one more time,

Less I lose more than what remains of this fragile and shattered mind.

For lucid are the sounds, and rancid is the smell,

Which emanate from within this private little hell.

“For the times they are changing” right before my very eyes,

As I once again recall the horror of it all, as…….

 twenty three young men that day, in agony died.

It all begun,

Taking ridge 141

With jets a screaming

And cong a teaming,

The trees were bare

And death hung in the air.

Then the orders came,

But who was to blame?

For we really shouldn’t even be there.

With piercing sounds

We hit the ground,

Yet once again we did arise,

And charged that black hill,

Only to lose more lives.

“Oh ride captain ride upon your mystery ship”

For it is evident that this day, I had lost my grip.

When suddenly I heard the waitress say,

“May I take your order sir, or would you prefer to wait”?

It was then I realized, it was just another bad trip,

As the radio concluded its song

“ride captain ride, upon your mystery ship”.

 J. Allen Wilson © 2004