A Protest; A Mother Who’s Lost

I ain’t no hippie but I ain’t no fool.

What’s the point of a game if there ain’t no rules?

All hell's broke loose in Vietnam

but it’s labeled just a conflict

since there’s no official declaration of war,

but the children who swore to protect their country

don’t know the difference

Fight with valor,

fight with pride,

they teach;

America is fighting for what is right.

But how can they fight for what is right if right doesn’t want to be fought for?

“If Vietnam falls then others will fall with her” 

is how they justify sending our boys over as if

America herself was drifting into the abyss of communism.

But let’s get real people; ashes and ashes make us all fall down.

Boys of 19 should be throwing footballs not grenades.

They should be aiming for the stars not down the scope of a gun,

crosshairs on the head of a boy possibly even younger than he.

They should be scrambling down the baseline not for their life behind a tree.

Why are we sending our boys

to witness the horrors of war

when the same people for who we fight

raid our camps in the dead of night?

They prowl around their native jungles

and kill our boys when they’re entirely vulnerable.

They set fires to trenches no man can escape.

Why are we sending our boys

to be scared shitless in a foreign land

when they are too young to yet understand this isn’t a high school fight?

They cannot comprehend what it’s like

to have bullets fired at them

and fire exploding at their feet,

only to come home,

wanting nothing more than a bed

to rest their head,

but finding themselves homeless, instead.

Once scared shitless now shit on,

stepped on,

spit on,

outcasts.

Land of the free, but whose freedom were they fighting for?

People cannot begin to understand what they had to endure.

But what they had to do gets lost in the reality of what they did,

televised for all to see.

Although people have no clue what it’s like to be

in the heart of the jungle,

in the heart of war.

But now our boys come back in a box or as hard as the box itself.

They understand now that it’s easier to throw punches then to pull them.

Purple hearts will not replace the ones they lost,

and it will never be able to rain again without those boys turned men 

wondering if their thunderous thoughts will ever stop torturing them.

Home of the brave turned to no home at all 

for the veterans of the conflict that is not a war.

America is not just a home for brave soldiers though,

it’s a home for brave people to take a stand.

And I ain’t no hippie but I ain’t no fool.

If we keep sending our boys to fight a battle that can’t be won,

wives will lose their husbands,

mothers will outlive their sons,

and America, will lose a generation.