art music poetry

barely avoided Nam
…..such a terrible soldier they didn’t send me…
if they’d have sent me
and told me to
bomb Cambodia,
I’d have probably pressed the button….
they sent someone else….
he pressed it…..
that doesn’t
excuse
me.
I’m sorry.

by Jake Sunflower

Comments by Dandelion De La Rue

Several years ago I was traveling around in Vietnam and somebody dragged me into an art exhibition of photographs of women who’d lost loved ones during the “American War.” It really got to me big time, the sorrow on their faces is still etched onto my brain. I got to the end and burst into tears. The women who worked there were pleased at first, but then I couldn’t shut it off, I sat down and blubbered away for around half an hour, big loud sobs, totally uncontrollable. I went through a box of kleenex. they put a screen in front of me finally, and then after awhile, I slunk out a side door and ran away. I felt so awful, for the immensity of the pain we caused, and the pain we felt on our end too, the young people who died and the sorrow, and the guys who died from Agent Orange and insanity and alcohol and drugs since. and I have to wonder, what would I have done, if I’d been a boy? would I have gone? I don’t know. we were so brainwashed. but that question bothers me sometimes. what would I have done?

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