Showing posts with label Poems about Viet-Nam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poems about Viet-Nam. Show all posts

Monday, March 23, 2026

War Metaphor Guy - poem

 This is a variant on an old poem and so possibly a re-post


Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

 

War Metaphor Guy

 

Does keyboard-war-guy truly mean that he

Will shoulder rifle, pack, and spares, and range

On blistered, bleeding feet into dead hell,

Obedient to an ill-considered oath

That calls upon his soul to deny itself?

 

How noble is his war -- upon the screen.

 

Does he intend to suffer sin-stained years

Of deprivation, lowest-bidder tins

Of surplus slime stored since some previous war,

Of murky water gassed with chemicals,

Of gasping, breathless, sodden, rotting heat?

 

How easy is his war -- upon the screen.

 

So does he really want a poor man’s soul

Ripped screaming, sh*tting, bleeding from his life,

Intestines flyblown in the devil’s sun?

Will he be satisfied with an eyeless corpse

Bloat-floating down another Vam Co Tay?

 

How glorious is his war -- upon the screen.

 

Now, keyboard war guy, march away, away

And how God wills, dispose the video games.

Friday, July 18, 2025

1970 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

1970

 

When I came home I was asked by a boyhood friend

“I haven’t seen you lately; where have you been?”

 

I’m still wondering about that

Monday, January 13, 2025

Stand-to for Night Patrol - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Stand-To for Night Patrol

 

 

The Americans were said to believe that the Communists are on the defensive…

 

-New York Times, 11 January 1970

 

I keep seeing a boat’s black silhouette

Upon the red water, against the red sky

And the black-death tree-line along the shore

A dark, decaying scene, and I don’t know why

Sunday, July 7, 2024

It Wasn't the Fourth of July - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

It Wasn’t the Fourth of July

 

     That we may wander o’er this bloody field

     To book our dead, and then to bury them

 

-Henry V IV.vii.75-76

 

It wasn’t the fourth of July, but it was about then

Near the Cambodian border, on the Vam Co Tay

Searching for two American airman whose machine had gone down

Down, down into the steaming green Vam Co Tay

 

Bloated and floating, quite still when we saw them

The sloshy prop wash bumped them about a bit

Empty eye sockets, mouths open in silent screams

We poncho-linered their bodies aboard the boat

 

Cigarettes of despair against the stench and rot

This was not what we sang about in school

War Metaphor Guy - poem

 This is a variant on an old poem and so possibly a re-post Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office LogoSo...