The following is from a corpsman ("Doc") in Beirut who wishes to remain anonymous:

Jeff,

I was thinking...The way Ive learned to deal with Beruit is through my poetry. I've been told by friends that I should get them published, however the poems are my pain on paper... things I couldn't share with strangers. Now as I sit thinking about it all, I think Id like to share it with my brothers who were there. Is there a place on your board for this type of expression?

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For Gods sake____
Let us sit upon the grass
and tell sad storys,
about the death
of brave young kings.

For they shall never reign____
Eyes forever closed...
Inside caskets rusted shut.
Their only life__
is our remembrance.


Coming Home
Change will come,
Change is here.
Love fades out,
Then reappears.
Now my water has turned
to wine and these
thoughts I have I now claim
as mine..
I'm coming home.

Change has been,
change will be,
time will tell,
Then time will ease.

My curtain has been drawn
and my heart can go to where
my heart does belong
I'm going home.


And I will have to be braver now,
than I have ever been.
And I will have to be stronger now,
Than I ever was before.
And I will have to be more loyal now,
Than I have ever been.

A warriors heart will never change...
Only its direction..
Only its focus.


I could see the man
I was yet to become..
And the man that was not to be..

But only with the eyes
of the man who
is.


Some things are better
left unsaid,

But they turn me inside
out,
And I can barely speak
of them,
Their only recourse,
Is to visit me...While I sleep.


I'd give anything to silence those sounds... 
the crying out,
the screams,
the choppers,
I hear it as if its happening
now..

Today I woke to the sound of a chopper in flight__ 
and I was back,
in Beruit again.
All the sounds mixed in...
Then I heard a man crying for his mother 
and I started my day
sobbing.

I wonder if he ever made it home to his mother.
I sometimes wonder if anybody got home.. 
Anybody?
Am I alone?


I saw J.P today hitchhiking...
(Like he ever would have!)
(was he going home?)
Yet there he was, for a fraction of a second.. 
(asking?)
No smile, no frown, no recognition..
no eye contact.
(like a stranger, which he was)
I wonder if he knew I did all I could?
(I wonder if I did?)


I was like a god...
I could do anything.
I could keep a man alive...
(Or so I thought.)
I was the corpsman...
I had to.
And now...
What compares?


The only ones for who the war is over,
are those who died fighting it.
For the rest of us it will always be,
just a nightmare away.


A man should live everyday,
as if it were a preflight check.
He has to ask himself every morning
"am I ready for liftoff?"
And if not...
Find the strength to go
anyway.


How can another know...?
The storys, untold by me?
How could another understand...?
The chaos? The terror?
The destruction of ourselves?
I should not have had to be there.
I should not be the one to explain...
I am the one who is owed an explaination... 
And that will never happen.

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