The Vietnam blues

This is a memorial peace for all Vietnam veterans. I hope that I did them justice. Thank you for your service.

The Vietnam Blues

By Shawn P Cassidy

He brought the jungle home inside his skull,

A tangle of nightmares he could never dull.

The war didn’t end when the guns went still,

It followed him back

with a predator’s will.

He hears choppers in the silence of night,

Rotors slicing shadows just out of sight.

The ghosts of his brothers march through his dreams,

Blood--soaked memories tearing at the seams.

The smell of napalm clings to his breath,

A perfume of fire, a whisper of death.

He wakes in a sweat with his fists clenched tight,

Still fighting the battles

that stole his light.

Crowds make him flinch, fireworks make him bleed,

Every loud crack a reminder of need.

The need to survive, to kill, to obey,

To bury the boy

and become the prey.

He walks through life like a man half 'alive,

A soldier of shadows who barely survives.

The war is a stain he can’t wash away,

A curse he carries

day after day.

And when he stares at the flag in the breeze,

He feels the weight

of a thousand pleas.

For the war may be over

for the world outside,

But inside his mind

it never died.

© 2026 Shawn P. Cassidy. All rights reserved