Culture of War Found Poem
Found Poem by Travis Carlson
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968
It was a quiet, cloudy day
I scanned the first few lines
and felt the blood go thick behind my eyes
Why me, I wondered
I was no soldier
I was too smart, too compassionate
I was too good for this war
What started out as rage
Soon burned down to a smoldering self-pity
My father asked what I would do
“Wait,” was all I had to say.
I looked at what I would leave behind
My parents
A girl named Martha
My scholarship to Harvard
Twenty one years old, an ordinary kid
I loved baseball and hamburgers and Cherry Coke
And now I was off on the margins of exile
Leaving my country forever
I was above this war
But there was nothing I could do
I had to accept it
I was going to war
The war was more boring than anything else
Most of the time spent wandering, village to village
Destroying people’s homes
Hoping you wouldn’t get ambushed
The first man I saw fall was named Ted Lavender
He was shot in the head
And laid with his mouth open
A swollen black bruise under his left eye
His cheekbone gone
“Oh, shit. The guy’s dead,” were the only words I spoke
after witnessing something so terrible
We were led to the village of Than Khe
We burned everything
We shot chickens, dogs
and trashed the village well
I saw many die
But we thought of it as though they were actors
Because in a way it seemed scripted
And because they had their lines memorized
Irony mixed with tragedy
It wasn’t long before I was one of those actors
I took a bullet straight to the heart
And said my scripted lines
Before my limp body was picked up by a chopper
We all had problems when we went to war
But when I was shot, I lost them all
It was like for me the chaos was gone
And the war was finally over
Found Poem made using The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968
It was a quiet, cloudy day
I scanned the first few lines
and felt the blood go thick behind my eyes
Why me, I wondered
I was no soldier
I was too smart, too compassionate
I was too good for this war
What started out as rage
Soon burned down to a smoldering self-pity
My father asked what I would do
“Wait,” was all I had to say.
I looked at what I would leave behind
My parents
A girl named Martha
My scholarship to Harvard
Twenty one years old, an ordinary kid
I loved baseball and hamburgers and Cherry Coke
And now I was off on the margins of exile
Leaving my country forever
I was above this war
But there was nothing I could do
I had to accept it
I was going to war
The war was more boring than anything else
Most of the time spent wandering, village to village
Destroying people’s homes
Hoping you wouldn’t get ambushed
The first man I saw fall was named Ted Lavender
He was shot in the head
And laid with his mouth open
A swollen black bruise under his left eye
His cheekbone gone
“Oh, shit. The guy’s dead,” were the only words I spoke
after witnessing something so terrible
We were led to the village of Than Khe
We burned everything
We shot chickens, dogs
and trashed the village well
I saw many die
But we thought of it as though they were actors
Because in a way it seemed scripted
And because they had their lines memorized
Irony mixed with tragedy
It wasn’t long before I was one of those actors
I took a bullet straight to the heart
And said my scripted lines
Before my limp body was picked up by a chopper
We all had problems when we went to war
But when I was shot, I lost them all
It was like for me the chaos was gone
And the war was finally over
Found Poem made using The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien