Douglas BergmanDouglas Bergman
Doug is a playwright, author, and poet. He was awarded the Charles Shelton Welcome Home Award for veterans of note and remains a POW/MIA speaker and activist. He recently wrote a prose poetry book of true stories about many of the memorable people he met while serving as a 1st Lt. Combat Infantry Platoon Leader with the 101 Airborne while serving in country from 1969 to 1970.
Three TVs blare at vacant eyes
Alone he sets aspirin in two neat rows
On pages full of angry cries
Stained by whiskey wishes
Gulps their affection running across the floor
To tell his buddy that lives next door
Empty rooms scream all his fears
Starving by a fridge full of affection.
In whiskey wild fire hazy years
Blazing holes in a charred black heart,
Desperate but can't fill the lonely
Anymore with fringed flowers only
So he lies alone
And coughs in his room
Beyond the trees, the battle fires blazed,
Body bags and empty graves waiting.
Graceland poets sang joyously,
Bozo's Circus tickets had finally come.
In Abraham?s restful shadow,
Prom dates were sealed with stolen kisses.
At the horizon of the sixties sun afar,
Rose armies of bloody arms
Through the haze of hemp and hate.
Daddy daddy tell me true,
Freedom's just your red, white and blue?
On Graceland echoed what father knew best,
Fading sermons do as I unto you,
Mop haired prophets beating
Love me do koo koo ka choo.
Graceland's wise trees weeping
For the last suburb sheep about to die.
Mom's little helpers scream our world's free.
The death rush reveals a bloody line,
War's not hell it's just the truth,
Each tribe must come to see and sigh.
Every child of any rainbow grew old
In the next mangled flesh line and lie,
Freedom?s only free and peaceful
Near Graceland's wise fat trees,
No purchase required, comes with batteries.