Long Over Due Support

Posted from Bethany Beach Delaware where my wife and I are vacationing: For you folks in blog-land I want to give you a heads up on what kind of comments my book has stirred up in people coming to the readings. I just recently did a book signing at the New Paltz VFW. Several vets were in attendance. I spoke on the issue of Vietnam vets not being recognized for the service they had preformed during the Vietnam War. I read a new poem titled “Now” that attempts to capture some of the pain of the returning soldier. Buy the end of the reading I had several men and women come up to me to share a war experience they or a loved one had. There were tears released for addressing a topic so long over due.

Most of the welcoming home I have experienced as a Vietnam vet has come in the form of other vets welcoming me home. I went to a Soldiers Heart works shop run by Ed Tick author of War and the Soul a book I can not recommend highly enough. At this work shop I was in my room reading the workshop info and saw that there were over twenty vender's who had contributed time, materials, and money to make the workshop happen. This was the first time in forty years that I felt my community acknowledge what I had done by going to Vietnam and I wept.

Now

I first wrote this poem after watching a ticker-tape parade honoring the Vietnam veterans ten years after the end of combat -- "ten years too late." With the present relevance of that experience I rewrote the poem in 2007.

Now!

Now! It's the style, it's the vogue.

Now! Writers are finally writing about blood that's nothing but red dust.

Now! Kids are wearing camouflage to school and packing plastic M-16s

Now! It's the rage to think about him, 'cause the rage in the Vietnam vet is old. Tears and beers have grown cataracts over eyes that once sighted M-60 machines guns.

Now! Step up. It's hip to notice him after forty years down the road.

Now! It's safe to slap him on the back; his metals are still hidden, family broken.

Now! Don't be afraid; he's no longer the baby killer, he long ago slipped into the darkness of the seventies, to cool.

Now! Don't you worry that you gave him a parade ten years too late. You watched him slapping leather down New York City's main drag while he got ticker tape in his gray hair as the media ground one last dry hump out of him.

Now! You can raise your hand and slap a thanks gig on the 58,000 boys who laid down in the Nam. Over 100,000 lay down here at home, and we don't count them, suicide man, our kids know about that.

Now! Let's thank the old vets for selling those hearts and minds so cheap so we could keep what we could keep.

Now! Let's not forget today's young vets who are finding out their lives are just as cheap.

by Larry Winters May 5, 2007