Category: Military Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 120
Copyright: 2000
The ultimate tribute to the Vietnam War and all those who serve and died during its many bitter years.
ASIAN DARKNESS: A COMMENTARY
The existence of this manuscript of poetry is not without precedent. While the subject of the Vietnam War, euphemistically and erroneously termed "conflict," has in recent years generated only a few poetic efforts--all of modest content, sparse themes and mild commercial success--"Asian Darkness" is intended neither as an war anthology nor a diatribe upon the United States' ill-advised involvement in South Vietnam and its subsequent tragic withdrawal in 1975. This opus is this writer's didactic effort to confront, and in verse delineate and passionately expose, the myriad of issues and experiences resultant from and tragically created by this seemingly endless war that dominated the American psyche and landscape during the nation's most turbulent years.
If there is a thesis or overall theme to "Asian Darkness," it is simply that war is hell, there is no substitute for victory, and that those who gave in part or whole "the last full measure of devotion" should not ever be forgotten--let alone received with the disgrace and dishonor that American G.I.'s (and other participants) incurred in no small degree from the large host of "concerned" media pontificators and citizens from every corner of the globe. Somewhere amidst all the violence, hate, rage, fear, horror, despair, grief, regret, pity, pathos, shame, guilt, pain and death are some momentary glimpses--both real and surreal--of love, kindness, devotion, courage, honor, human excellence, and even humor.
But in the state of human emotions and human nature at its most indelible best and most depraved and inhuman depths there appears to be neither a balance nor a resolution to this "best forgotten war" nor for that matter to any other "noble conflict endured for the cause of freedom." There are only bitter memories, terrible losses and the lingering ravages of the best within all humanity gone terribly wrong...at a price too high to ever be accorded its proper tribute here or elsewhere...in verse or in prose.
For those who remember and who had been there I have offered--what is from a fellow veteran and what might be modestly considered a passionate attempt from the innermost depths of a unresolved soul--the highest tribute available: "You are remembered!" And I pray that whoever ventures here will never...never...forget the Vietnam War.
SAMPLE POEMS:
VIETNAM THESIS
1 (Narrative)
Some of us were warriors
and some of us were cowards.
Some of us fought for glory
and others for survival.
Some of us knew the reasons;
but most of us knew better.
Some of us were there by choice;
but most of us by decree.
The seasoned ones had known why,
but the young ones never would.
After a while we all knew
it really didn't matter.
All of us became kindred;
a handful far less than that.
And the ones who had it worst
was every last one of us!
Although every one of us
was always too scared to know.
Too many feel guilt and shame,
and too few pride and honor.
Too many fought too bravely;
too few had the sense to run.
Too few made it home alive,
and too many never did.
For duty was our thesis
and patriotism our code.
Yet all of us knew the price
our service was called to pay.
But no one knew the rewards
the home front waited to serve.
They declared it on the news
and at every stateside port:
We were killers and butchers
and not the sons of freedom.
So we were greeted with scorn
and showered with apathy.
Yet despite the passing years
and the revisions of time,
We all had two enemies
and they came from either side.
Although the one should have known
which side all of us were on.
2 (Diatribe)
Twenty years after the war
and I will feel the same to say:
Step aside, there, on the street
you acid-head, drop-out hippie!
The man in the wheelchair rolling by
you ain't got one God-damned thing on!
He gave his manhood to the Mekong Delta
while you were smoking pot at Disneyland!
And he gave his soul to Asia for America
so you could stand in line for welfare!
And he gave his fidelity to the V.A.
so you could spout treason at Berkeley
and worship the North Vietnamese flag!
Fifty years after the war
and I will feel the same to say:
Get that smug, arrogant smile off your face
you presumptuous, parasitical intellectual!
The guy in the uniform isn't your inferior
and is twice the man any diploma will make of you!
The uniform is his badge of integrity
and everything a billion fifty-cents words
won't ever let you equal.
And it symbolizes every noble quality
a trillion Einsteins couldn't teach you!
He would have killed Nazis for you or Japs
and died for every losing cause you feel guiltless of.
But there's nothing he's killed or died for
that included you as his symbol of America!
And an hundred years after the war
I will feel the same to say:
Go straight to hell and don't pass redemption
all you cowering, bleeding-heart liberals
who wallow beneath invidious refuges and plutocratic titles!
We took Germany and Japan in four years
and would have taken this God-damned little Asian nation
in less than one if not for all your planned betrayal!
And turn off your stinking television sets
you fat, no-account, disingenuous Americans!
The jingoistic, blood-drenched spectacle you're watching
are the portrayals of your own families you let tyrants
brainwash you into leading into slaughter!
And the war you were duped into abhorring and forgetting
is the same blood bath you elected the same assholes
into office to perform and betray into losing!
So turn off your God-damned television sets
you truth-fearing, moralizing sycophants,
or go kiss Benedict Arnold's ass!
(Even a thousand years after the war!)
3 (Memorial)
I lost my legs at Bien Hoi,
a place only a half-wit could find on a map
(or the son-of-a-bitch who gave it its name!)
and when I went home in a wheelchair
I got off the plane and was welcomed
with a barrage of fresh hate and rotten food
and to an hostile crowd of fellow Americans
shouting expletives no dictionary should define.
And although they hurried me down the ramp
and sped me home through the back way,
I knew it was not because
they feared the harm that might come to me,
but from the irritation I was causing the crowd.
So I went home to meet my parents
but they were too disgraced to bend down
to embrace the ignominy of my wheelchair.
And I went home to find my sweetheart,
but she had hastily already given her love
to some local limbful hero of university riots.
And I went out to get a job
but they were only offering equal opportunity
to cripples who were victims of native violence.
And I went to crawl in line for unemployment
but was told they weren't giving charity
to the cast-off veterans of unpopular wars.
So I drank all night and watched T.V.
and commiserated with strangers like God
and maligned heroes like John Wayne.
I drank all night and prayed for death
and shared my nightmares with a film star
whom God had left as Patriarch of America.
I had gone home to the country I fought for
to only find that I had gone home to Hanoi.
I had gone home without my soul or my legs
to only find a host of belligerent Americans
(who I did not know and had done no harm to)
whose noblest ambitions were to find my legs
so they could ram them down my throat!
But I left my legs in a foreign graveyard
and I leave them now as a memorial to John Wayne.
He is the only American who would have saluted me
as I was rolled unceremoniously down that ramp.
He is the only American who would have given his life
so I could have stood on those legs one second longer.
But John Wayne is dead...and so is America,
with thousands of others who died and die unsaluted.
Yet, if I ever had another pair of legs to give
or even one or a thousand lives ever worth giving,
I swear I would give them to have had John Wayne
the only American to greet me at the bottom of that ramp.
A FINAL SALUTE
A semi-automatic forty-five caliber pistol
and an eight-round clip and a trigger
requiring only the slightest pull,
were all that he needed to get along.
These, plus love and conviction,
were all that he ever wanted
to now complete his final mission.
For it was the same ivory-handle gun
that he had carried in the shameful war.
And the same expertly death-rendering gun
that had got him through it in one piece!
But love and conviction were not concepts
he had carried around in that war.
Only courage and skill and blind devotion
were all he needed or ever required
to put the gun to its destructive use.
And sometimes, only anger and raw madness
were all he ever had to have
to make quick losers of his enemies!
For he had gone to the hell grounds
to fight the noble losing cause.
And never once questioned the givers
who give lost causes to reward patriotism.
He never once ever questioned the givers
who gave crippled bodies and body bags
to the home front for fighting lost causes.
He simply did his duty courageously
and completed his service as required of him
while feeling satisfied of his contribution
in a war fought against tyranny and oppression
and for the sanctity of noble concepts,
until he returned home to other hell grounds
and found tyranny and oppression of another kind!
And, until he returned home to that other war
to find anger and raw madness awaited him again,
he had placed the forty-five in a closet...
and a closet over the memory of Vietnam.
Then one day in weariness of death and killing
and in futility of life and living
(and as sanity's answer to a savage, insane world!)
he took the forty-five out of the closet
and, while saluting the flag of lost causes
which had hung unceremoniously
like a forgotten noble concept
over the closet of his horror-ridden heart,
he placed the death-rendering gun against his head
and finally came to terms with the Vietnam War.
(And in that moment of unspeakable innocence
before completing his final mission,
he said a prayer for all the living dead
and for those who were never given time to live!
And lastly, he thought of all those
who would have honored him
for putting a bullet through his head!)
And then...bravely did.
FINAL LIFTOFF
All the transports are crowded
and all the fleeing faces are shrouded
in pitiful disgrace and disgust!
For the helos and planes have been boarded
and all the survivors have been rewarded
with memories no V.A. hospital will ever adjust!
Still, all the warriors are all going home
to join the draft-dodgers and demonstrators
who were so God-damned much smarter than they!
Though some, in homes made of pine and chrome
are returning as canceled heroes and liberators
to an America that smells of moral decay!
But look! Up on the roof tops and beyond:
the final victory is being jokingly won!
Well, so long as we all get out first,
the others can be damned and cursed!
So liftoff, damn you! And bid farewell
to this God-forsaken Asian wasteland!
Never mind all those we must leave behind,
so long as we obey one more little scummy command!
So we liftoff, and in the last, final farewell,
We will soon reach the safety of good, old U.S.A.!
Never mind the allies we leave behind in hell
or the God inside ourselves we desert and betray!
Just bid farewell, goodbye and adieu
to the poor, old Vietnam we loved and knew!
Goodbye honor, goodbye victory and...uh...
Goodbye all of you who lived and died for America!
ASIAN DARKNESS
We do not apologize for our divided beliefs
nor for all our separate ideologies,
nor for our various political affiliations,
nor for the different choices we made
during all the long years of Asian darkness.
We will enjoy our own celebrations
and make our own peace with peace and defeat.
And learn to tolerate and accept
all the illusions of war and victory
that turned sour and devoured moments of glory.
Yes, we are enjoying and celebrating
some acts of heroism and some acts of butchery,
some days of love and many nights of hate,
some memories of hope, many nightmares of grief,
the darkness of fallen comrades and murdered victims,
the thunder of CH-46's and V.C. mine fields
and red-flame sniper fire and grenade shrapnel,
and of cities and villages blown to smithereens
and of former high-school buddies dislimbed
or decapitated or obliterated into Asian mud!
and of peace treaties formulated by warmongers
and mass burials celebrated at mass rallies!
and of melting tanks, sinking ships and burnt flags
and of blazing helicopter or B-52 cockpits
filled with the screaming sounds of careening death!
Yes, we are relishing and commemorating
the sight and smell of North Vietnamese artillery
and the sight and smell of our own destructive prowess!
And if you should pass us relishing on the street
or find us commemorating at some dingy bar,
you should know us by our special sight and smell!--
They are qualities infinitely unique and wondrous
and shared only by mad men or Mekong paraplegics
who dream yet of returning to recover their losses
from the piles of Saigon flesh and napalm landscapes
we ravenously remember every night in Asian darkness.
Excerpt
The war is over...when every descendant of every descendant ever associated with it is erased from the earth and all memory...and all recordation of Vietnam and its vile Asian jungles are permanently erased from all memory and history. Otherwise...the war goes on, Judah! The war goes on!
Professional Reviews
An incredible book
Read this book many years ago. It hits the stomach and renders the reader violated and empassioned! I now think about the Vietnam War almost every day...and cry some tears for all those who gave their guts and lives and souls to that bitter experience.
E. Stafford
Some stirring, sad poems here
This book of poetry must have a poem that deals with every conceivable subject about Vietnam, Asia, military units and individuals, and the horrible, ten-year-plus war itself. There are even poems about love and God...which all somehow pronouce the overall theme of the book. Some poems make me love my country. Others make me very mad and I wish I was born on another planet and every politician in America was forced to read this book.
L. Beale
Vietnam vets, beware!
If you're a Vietnam vet or anyone who remembers the 1960's and the fall of Saigon in 1975--you should read this book, but at the same time beware! It will tear your guts out. And make you wish you were Rambo and could go back in time and set things straight!
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