SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN FIGHT: THE FIGHT IS DONE FOR VETERANS

11/11/VIETNAM

We stood in line naked as the day we were born

and not much older than that,

 getting shots from 5 needle guns,

two at a time one in each arm.

Those that didn’t fall out laughed as the rest woke up

to find the world hadn’t ended as they were handed

everything from a watch to uniforms to skivvies.  

Pushups, some big motherfucker always yelling for more pushups

 and then you learning he was a chief or master sergeant 

and he hated you because he didn’t want to watch

as your flag covered aluminum box came back

from somewhere people were being ignorantly stupid.  

You never said whether you were going hither or yon,

you just went where you were told

did your best to kill as many as were trying to kill you.

You had as much desire to live as they did,

brothers in arms fighting wars in places

cowards and leaders dare not tread.

And then come home safe, alive

for the children of love to spit on.

I’ll never forget that spit on.

I was a Sailor, I patrolled the Atlantic Ocean with a radar scope.

I didn’t kill any babies, or fire any jungle villages

helped pull a few brothers from other mothers

from another land from foaming seas that sunk their boat.

All hands dead, but not all lost at sea. And never spit on. 

I often thought as I read of a war a half a world away

rising body counts and was not shocked

when I learned the truth that the children of love

spit on, spit on men for wearing green,

were as full of shit as

even old veterans spit out

that we were the first to lose a war

in a land no one like us belonged in

except we were told to go.  Spit on.

And now we have a wall

everyone wants to hide behind it.

The thing Is we still see you spit,

sputtering on about the constitution we swore to protect

MY! How times change.  

You own your actions even if they were forty years ago,

you own them still,

same as I do.

You may have changed

or so you say

but I doubt it,

I think you simply changed your hatreds.

And what I find funny as hell

is of all the boomers

that could have gone

to serve and protect

their country and constitution, 
symbolized by a cracked bell,

right or wrong they didn’t .

And now as fat old men

Standing behind a wall

they do not know one name on

they hide and say they have an absolute right

to have weapons to spit lead on every

American that offends them.

I laugh because as soon as they graduated

they went on to find another way to stay

out of a war they protested

but in their future as the mighty 

in the halls of power without

second thought willingly

send other mothers children off to fight

with the same lies of truth and right.

To come home in aluminum

flag draped coffins full of the darkest night.

Don’t say Happy Veterans day to me

I know why I went to sea to see

 A boy made into a man that is me.

I own what I do.

One thing I do not own is I never spit on you.

© M Durfee

11/11/13



 http://www.va.gov/vetdata/Report.asp