Author Information
5. Too Many, Too Much
Folder:
Vietnam Series Living for God and living for love,
Those are the things I lived for before.
But with what I’ve seen and how I feel
I don’t know what I am anymore.
Too much killing and too much blood,
Not enough of anything I was living for.
I think that I’m fighting for the right thing
But I really don’t think I can take much more.
I’ve let too many comrades go,
Too many others fell under my gun.
Looking back I see I’m not the same person
That I was when I had first begun.
Too many decisions I don’t make the same
Too many morals have been compromised
Too many sins are under my name,
Even in Hell, I’d be despised!
I’ve got to get out of this war that I hate,
I have to get out before it eats me alive
Have to escape what i've seen this past year
Before I find the answers at the edge of a knife.
That is it, I have decided.
With a fine barrel covered in soot,
I’ll take my 9 one last time
And I’ll put a hole right in my foot.
Then I’ll be told I can pack my things,
And I can shape up to be shipped home
Too much of me I’ve left behind
Maybe I’ll find some saved up at home.
You seem quite adept at placing yourself into a mindset of the Vietnam soldier. In retrospect this is admirable but a bit "Hollywoood". Effects of the war were not quite so dramatic in the moment. When death and dying become an everyday reality, the politics of the war, the morality of fighting are relegated to rather obsccure places in the mind.
I do like the way in which you write. I would say, this has the feel of someone who is writing in retrospect when safely home.
All in all it is well done. Tim