American Youth in Asia–a song by Larry Rogers

American youth in Asia
I hear your jungle boots
Moving in the elephant grass
And the bamboo shoots
What a chilling mercy killing
Yours is gonna be
American youth in Asia
A generation put to sleep

Ask the old men on the draft boards
Why their sons aren’t here too
And tell Mama instead of piano
Wish I’d studied Kung Fu
What a chilling mercy killing
This is gonna be
American youth in Asia
A generation put to sleep

They took the stripes off a tiger and put ‘em on me
And the other boys of Company “B”
Don’t know when he plans to attack
But there’s a big cat scratching at my back
What a chilling mercy killing
Mine is gonna be
American youth in Asia
A generation put to sleep

Another plane lands at Travis
So many lost souls inside
While on the rolling hills of Arlington
Tombstones multiply
What a chilling mercy killing
This is gonna be
American youth in Asia
A generation put to sleep

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I was raised in a potting shed trailer in the piney woods of west central Arkansas–a sanctuary for moonshiners, marijuana growers, and merry (and not-so-merry) pranksters. I’m a poet and singer/songwriter. In 2017, Golden Antelope Press published a collection of my poems titled, “Live Free or Croak.” I was drafted and served with the First Air Cav in Vietnam in ’67 and ’68.

https://larrysrogers.com/music.html

Featured Poet–Six Poems by Larry Rogers

Monsoon Sky

In high school
I read a book
about submariners.
Anxiety, its
author said,
is sweating out
depth charges.
Then I couldn’t
imagine a fear
so intense;
this morning
that’s easy
on this hill
with a number
for its name.
Every bunker
and every hole
in the ground
in which two
or more grunts
are gathered
is a little
mental hygiene clinic,
and it’s still
impossible to manage
the stress here.
Bloated corpses
litter the landscape,
and choppers, at
max capacity with
our wounded, splash
like giant tadpoles
across the monsoon sky.

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