My father, Malcolm Roy Ball, Vietnam 1967-1970
War Torn
our world is being torn apart
I threaten conflicted outbursts
in remembrance of him
and them
*
My great grandfather’s fought in WWI
My grandfather’s in WWII
My father in Vietnam
He protests in his own way
no purple reign on his parade
or Prince
to overshadow
dvd’s re running over blue
and red clashes – violent flashes
of memory
in black and white snapshots
of the fallen
and homeward bound comrades
of Malaya and Singapora
They were shafted
in one way or another
left to ponder life
and death
still
images Napoleon could not reconcile
nor the English continue to suppress
I don’t think he will ever forget.
‘See that guy there?
He had his arm blown off
and that one hung himself
a couple of years ago’
His way of keeping it real
as much as for him
as for us, who are held captive
in his momentum
They were drenched in Orange, Red
and Yellow agents
descendants of a Purple rain
then left to fend for themselves
amidst a wrath and fury
one can only call ignorance
blinded by a politically correct
notion of compassion
They were only nineteen
and nothing compares to youthful
enthusiasm; to be not unlike
their forefathers
Teenagers today
get their psychedelic fix
whining and dining on a scourge
that has become a pandemic –
a demonic frenzy
of self indulgent arrogance!
Mary-Jane makes
a Nightingale of pain
Today is ANZAC Day
I am both proud and sad
I have a legacy to uphold
and if it weren’t for those men
and women who experienced trauma
I would not have known complex PTSD
or to let my mind take me
to a battlefield of my own design
In remembrance of them
and parts of my self
lost forever,
I like the eulogy of
walking in the purple rain
Lest We Forget
© Copyright 2016, Jodine Derena Butler. ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved
Poetry Out West 
My father’s medals just arrived so I’m going to have them professionally framed 🙂 War is evil but politicians are the Devil himself!
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My both grandfathers fought in the Spanish Civil War, on the side of Franco´s national army. Well, they didn´t fight really, because one of them was radio-telegraphist, and the other one was baker. Spain didn´t get involved in the Second World War because Franco was allied of Hitler and Mussolini in the beginning, and after that, Franco was allied of USA and UK against the communism. The motherfucker was smart, he he. But in Spain we hate wars, we had enough with a bloody war between brothers, 80 years ago, and our society is still divided and separated in two sides. My parents suffered a dictatorship and the spanish feeling is no more wars, no more violence and authoritarianism. The unique medal in my parents´home was a nazi medal bought by brother in Poland as a souvenir.
My father had an uncle who fought with the nazi army in Russia because Franco helped Hitler sending “spanish volunteers” there. This military relative of mine, had a german girlfriend and my father still retains a postcard sent by this german woman in which she told him that she lost her brother in Russia. Summing, this could be a great topic to write, the family feats in wartime.
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Thanks, that’s it!!! Lol
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Lol
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Toll words, setting because we remain ache all with ours, which do not see or want to see
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Yes it does. My father has just nought me copies of his war medals for a gift 🙂
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Both of my grandfathers were in WWII, one in Europe, one in the Pacific. My dad was in Vietnam, on a patrol boat searching for weapons and such on native boats. My father-in-law was a SEAL and I don’t even want to think about what he saw and did. War sucks.
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