Portside

Viet Nam is Still With Us

By Buff Whitman-Bradley



‘Nam vet



So emaciated is he,

So doubled over and folded into himself

As he sits in his wheel chair

Holding a bright green

Hand-lettered sign --

‘Nam vet

Anything helps –

That he seems almost

Not to exist,

Which is, apparently,

What his country wishes for him.



I hated that fucking war,

The slaughter of literally millions

By carpet bombing,

Saturation of the countryside

With deadly toxins,

Massacre after massacre after massacre,

Children on fire,

But I do not hate

This old man

Who was once a boy

Perhaps eager, perhaps reluctant

To do what they called his duty,

To serve as they said his country.

And after it was all over,

When Johnny came marching home

With his damaged body,

His mangled soul,

His broken heart,

They crumpled him up and threw him away

Like an old grocery bag

Full of empty cans.

And now, no place to live,

No money for food,

No treatment for his permanent wounds,

Just a dilapidated wheelchair to call home,

Where he sits with his friend the green sign,

Barely hanging on

In America the beautiful.

 

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have been published widely in print and online journals.  His latest book is “Crows with Bad Writing.”  He was a founding member of the Courage to Resist organizing collective, and producer of a podcast featuring interviews with military members who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those interviews became the book “About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.”  He lives in northern California with his wife, Cynthia.