Awakened by a story of Love and Honor read.
Haunted by liquid Blue eyes I never saw.
A boy of nineteen filled with hope and dreams
who died for no reason, far from home in a sea of his own red.
The law of the land they said. Drafted and herded like cattle...
As, liars dressed in blue striped suits talked of acceptable losses,
and causalities for the cause, with drinks in their hands. Safe.
Our friends died in a jungle war,
over Power and papers colored green.
While lawyers lay in soft beds. What would God have said?
What of the Kansas Mom who lost him, who made her life complete.
Does the widow weep for other women's boys? Their temples destroyed by
greed's need.
Yellow cornfields were watered with salty tears
the day the jungle was watered
with the running red life of futureless boys.
His dreams gone, stole by Caesar's lead,
thrown by other lads, doing what they were told.
Thinking their Government knew what was right.
No winners just the dead.
Boys dying to the diesel drums of a lonely song,
on river rafts made from steel.
Oh! Brokers of Death, what of the living?
Those who held the dying,
filled with Hate and Rage under the eastern sun.
Time died too,
as the honorable love of friends so young,
slipped through blood soaked fingers.
With Death coming in the form of fiery hot lead flies in the rivers air,
was there time to say goodbye?
Did those in Power care?
By all the Gods in all the worlds,
how did John Wayne make this look like fun?
You Senators, saying Christian prayers
before you vote for wars your sons will not fight in,
I ask are the commandments ten just suggestions be?
Too young I am to have been placed in harms way,
yet family I have lost yet in jungles far way from Galveston Bay.
And each year I ride to a wall black
covered with names our Congressmen have forgotten.
Names of sons, brothers, daughters, uncles, lovers, and friends...
I ride here to tell you cowards behind the ivy covered walls
I remember yet.
You remember too, Romans dressed in American clothes,
I vote, on that you can bet.
Before I again can sleep, Cry will I,
for those who will forever be nineteen.
