Written by Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger; adapted by Mike Essig.


Halfway around the world tonight
In a strange and foreign land
A soldier packs his memories
As he leaves Afghanistan

And back home, they don't know too much
There was just no way to tell
You know* you had to be there
To know that war was hell

And there won't be any victory parades
For those that's coming back
They'll fly them in at midnight
And unload the body sacks

And the living will be walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seems to care these days
When a soldier makes it home

Somewhere in America tonight
In this strange and foreign land
A soldier unpacks memories
That he saved from Vietnam

They said it wasn't easy
Just another job, well done
Then the government in Saigon fell
To the sounds of rebel guns

And the faces of the comrades
Who were blown out of the sky
Leaves you bitter and disgusted
That they didn't have to die

The old men who planned that war
You know they all died safe in bed
With none of their rich and privileged sons
Ending up torn or dead

Back home they didn't know too much
There was just no way to tell
You know you had to be there
to know that war was hell

And there wasn't any big parades
For those that made it back
They flew them home in secret
and told them to make tracks

And the living were left walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seemed to care back then
When a soldier made it home

The night is coming quickly
And the stars are on their way
As I stare into the evening
Looking for the words to say

That I saw the lonely soldier
Just a boy that's far from home
And I saw that I was just like him
While upon this earth I roam

And there may not be any big parades
If I ever make it back
As I come home under cover
To a world that can't keep track

Of the heroes who have fallen
Let alone the ones who roam
Guess that's why nobody seems to care
When a soldier makes it home

You could find someone better, trust me I'm someone who hides their feelings beneath their sweaters I'm a distanced person who spaces out even in the moments that are most important. My anxiety keeps me from saying the things that I want to blurt out so badly but cannot because of the words that others will slap down on me. Trust me I'm not someone to stand beside. Toxicity engulfs me often I'm barely pushing through this sticky path that was created out of hate my anxiety is always entertained do you not understand the pain that these people have caused me to feel!?
Insane.
I always thought I was, because my thoughts often turned from happy to horrific once something bad had been said, well what did you expect?! For me to be perfectly happy afterwords and forgive you as if you had never meant the words that twisted and slurred around in my mind, ******* it's about time you learned your place bullying is not something that can be accepted so easily so stop doing it for ***** sake I cannot begin to describe the way I hated myself for so long! I'm damaged even now from back then and it's been so long! I know you don't give not one single ****. It's depressing really, how empty I had and have felt because of you..
Let me try to define this kind of pain for you since I know you'd never be able to handle the things that went through my mind after what you had caused me to feel. You see I have always been trapped inside of a shell, even when I was very young I was shy but you made it a point to deny it's all in my mind you said to me a billion times but did you know that I was dreaming of dying, drowning, suffocating, nearly injuring myself as the tears would fall down. I was a suicidal case thanks to the things people had forced me to endure you thought it was funny but would you still if you knew how violent I had become towards myself?!
Just try to imagine now, you have a child and will probably have more what will you say to them when they come rushing in through the door, their angering tears slapping down against the floorboards as if they were raindrops will you let them know you were not a victim!? I bet you will lie and tell them something to confide in I hope for their sake you do because if I knew that my parents caused others to feel such ways well ******* I bet I'd have went insane knowing I was living in the same house as a perpetrator. *How could you do that, mother!?

Violaceous twilights,
      clandestinely sated
lavished 'til morn's early blush
   midst honey suckled euphoria,
 poems hidden 'neath
         satin pillowcases,
written 'tween the dew
    of rendezvous'
       blissed arousal
forevermore eagerly breathless,
      reawakening intentions
  aloft the vast obscurity of
        a wistful sunset's surrender

I stand by the period bed
where Dupleix rested his head,
wondering at his kind of life,

if he lay there with wife
or some native maid.

doesn't hint his bronze bust
if he lay there bare
in ebullient lust

stirred by a girl darkly thin
bowing himself to her embrace
finding in his war beaten mind, happiness,

or, there wasn't any such thing,
he lay there staring at the ceiling
far from even one warm kiss
storming his brain to defeat the British...

I think of the kitten that survived a few days,
it still pains.

In the museum, I rhyme dust with lust.

Obscurity's trenchant
     sorrows blotting
        tissue paper cuts,
tears aptly smeared
    in hidden fears of
        first dashed allusions,
darkly flippant metaphors
       sans passionate accolades
          left to gingerly decay,
    grandiloquently speaking,
       'Happily Ever After' is
           hardly a verbose nuance
             throughout a quinine
                         poet's collection

Ink staining blank pages,
sentiments caught fire

blurb in the moment,
a notion for the ages

simple inspiration's  nectar,
provocation's bedevilment

mockingbird of emotions
all that is sacred and trivial

tempting a blind ear to hear
invoking silent eyes to see

tainted lips to sing for eternity
asunder notes of parchment

one's own big blast of creation
*poetry in the making