I received a photo of this poem, by a Vietnam veteran who committed suicide shortly after he wrote it, in the manuscript of another Vietnam veteran's memoirs from his time as a Marine in Vietnam, and after homecoming. This poem is apparently up on the wall of the "Post Traumatic Stress Unit" at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Waco, Texas.
---
(It's easy to understand honoring the vet who wrote this poem as one of his last pleas, but seriously -- if I were being treated for PTSD and were struggling with some of the same issues, I'm not sure it would be that perky to go by this particular wall art regularly and remind myself, oh yeah, right after that guy wrote that -- well, he ended things. Even though it's perfectly understandable why he felt things had gotten to that point; and equally well how the other vets and the staff there would want to honor his passing with this tribute. People who believe in the ancient Chinese art of placement, feng shui, would say, never hang anything on the wall that brings your energy down, not up, when you look at it. But I'm sure they did it out of love and respect for the guy concerned...)
As for the poem -- well, it's not gonna win any awards as a poem, but in terms of conveying one man's brokenness and pathos, it does that really well. Very sorry the story had to have such a sad ending, and not just for this veteran, but for many others like him, from Vietnam and other wars. Here's what the poet, known only to us by his initials, "A.W.D.," wrote in 1989:
Solitude
I have lived in this prison I built for most
of my life
And I have blocked out all reason, all guilt
and all strife.
No one may enter this prison of mine
For I have failed at life,
now I resign.
Now as I sit here too cloudy to think
My mind and body, they no longer link
My life I see before me, like old movies that
aren’t real
But that’s what I see and
that’s what I feel.
May God have mercy, may He not be cruel
May He understand the prayer of a fool
Inside of me, I hear the screams of distress
Let me out of this prison
Please let me rest.
-- A.W.D., 1989
