Coming home from the war (Reprise)
(When I had yet to learn the power of understatement
My dreams awaken me still. Can I bother to tell you?
Just as being in Vietnam was no picnic
Yes, we were glad the first television war
And they could all kiss my ass. I know I know.
.
- by Mark S. Foley
Like the poem?
when it came to describing the horror and hyperbole of war,
my rhetoric flew in the face of the body politic,
which seemed to always want to say,
shush! You’ll wake the neighbors up! Exactly.
To me silence was synonymous with death.
And screw the neighbors anyway.)
You’re going to hear it anyhow,
because it’s not my soul, it’s America’s
that’s at stake. Let us flash back…
no, not to Columbus and the Indian genocide,
nor to slavery or the robber barons;
Let us start with a more recent manifest destiny….
coming home was no parade,
which did not bother us so much, but
instead of ‘welcome home’
it was ‘we forgive you’
(we forget you, we ignore you, we reject you)
pick one of the above.
finally failed to play in Peoria
and lost in the ratings.
Glad to be home but what now?
Options: the GI Bill or unemployment,
the government still pitching pennies at us
like we were walls or beggars. Fine.
People would say why are you so bitter, so angry?
Why don’t you assimilate
(into the beautiful mosaic of American amnesia?)
Or why don’t you ever vote; don’t you believe in democracy?
Laughter. Me?
That was the trouble you see.
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