Falling slow like grizzled rain

I see it flow like fine champagne
The cigar burns, his memory yearns
It rushes back, the stinging pain

At eighteen he received his draft
His mother cried into his shoulder
His father shook that mortal hand
From then on out they called him “soldier”

His suburban fingers, they grasped the handle
Pulled the trigger, lit the candle
The yellow boy, he gave a yell
When entered forth that blazing shell

That boy, he gurgled, choked on blood
Then forth he puked his chewed up cud
“Oh Saigon, I did it all for you!”
Then gave his life for the commie coup

The white boy looked at his bruised hands
He looked out over those burning lands
He questioned his suburb, his parents, his nation
His president, high school, Hawaiian vacations

What was there left but a few horny men
Some children, some napalm, and a jungle of sin?
Death, lead, and steel took over their lives
Grenades and AKs, pistols and knives

Capitalism, communism, do either truly exist?
Or are they simply our excuses to let war subsist?
After living through a war that lacked real reason
In which governments threatened their own teenagers with treason
In a dystopian world that’s already here
An old vet points a pistol down the length of his ear...