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January 6, 2007

A Medal for a Son

By Frank

Anti-War Poem

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A Medal for a Son [Vietnam War Era] Your mother watched her pre-natal diet for your sake, while you father sweated to pay the bills. Each heart rejoiced with pure delight through years of nurturing. Bed-time stories; playing catch; bumps and bruises, booster shots. In sickness, health, and major-minor mishaps, all bound together till death do us part. "Son, take you vitamins; mind you manners. Hurry! We'll be late for church." Ah, then school at last where disciplined learning reigns, and the important thing is to get along with the group. But soon, the bauble bursts and the TV scene shows hate, not love, as Blacks lash out, and cold assassinations vie with a brutalizing undeclared war for your attention. Then, on to the highest school where instilled dissent ruptured the mind, and freed the will for aimless wandering. Free at last! No restraints! barefoot, bearded, flowers in hand, peace and love at any price! Old tarnished world, split! You who made it so, split too! Damn the war! damn the draft! damn the track you've put me on. I want out – now! Temporarily lost, the bewildered mind free from bonds of convention, smells the sweet flowers of oblivion and trips into the never-never land of no worries, no frustrations, no reality. But dreams get busted and reality crowds in upon you; the old world demands its pound of flesh. Greetings! from the draft board starts the immutable forces that work their ways against you. War, barbarity, and primeval violence soon push aside the youthful values nurtured from the cradle. It's kill or be killed and you find out that killing kills the killer and dealing death becomes a way of life. For what? For naught is the cry of the youthful mind that sees no sense in the mutual killing of pseudo enemies. They too caught up by the same monstrous forces that use youths as shields are loathe to kill, and die, for similar reasons. But, lo you died, despite our natal care, for dubious, unknown causes and denied for reasons no one could adequately explain. So, we went to Washington where the president duly solemn, and extravagant with praise, awarded you posthumously with an encoffined trinket symbolizing the ultimate absurdity, a medal for a Son! Francis T. Sganga [1968]

Authors Website: www.sganga.net

Authors Bio:

    I am an 86 year-old retired educator turned writer. After turning 80 I wrote two books;

The Diary of a Dying Man [How to prepare for and cope with aging] and Words of Wisdom Through the Ages [What the wise have to say about life and living]. Prior to those books I wrote a whistle-blowing book titled That Stubborn Seed of Hope castigating top level educators for engaging in unlawful and unethical activities, and God, Where Are You?, and intellectual argument for the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

    I currently play competitive racquetball three times a week and ride an 1100 cc motorcycle daily. One of my “hobbies” is to read OpEd News every evening. I see this as one of the most important ways to inform citizens about important news and views that don’t appear in the corporate-controlled  media. The Humanoids running our country and uninformed citizens are what will do our country in as it did the Holy Roman Empire; too many of us are like sheep being led to the slaughter house. Where sheep innocently eat grass, totally unaware of the fate awaiting them, so too do many of our citizens eat the crap tossed to them by the media in the form of filtered news, sports, soap operas, situation comedies and “reality pap shows,” like Big Brother and The Survivor. In short, P.R. corporations do not target the “thinkers” amongst us since they have figured out that most Americans are “brain dead” as epitomized by the kinds of commercials we are subjected to. Why tell viewers the mechanical merits of a car? Just stick a smiling babe with big boobs in front of it. Thank God for the mute button!

    Two of my favorite quotations are: “Lie to me once and I’ll never believe you again!” and “Don’t just tell me that you love me, show me!”

 

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