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WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (AFP) - The "Poet Warrior" writes about the ambush that killed his fellow US soldiers in Iraq, his longing to see his girlfriend again, and the new life that awaits him back home as rockets fly overhead.
"I was sitting on my front porch
- chilling with my lady
- Listening to the DJ
- all night long
- Got a letter in the mail
- said 'Go to war or go to jail'," US Army Specialist Joseph Hart writes in a poem titled "Thoughts of Home."
"They sent me off to Baghdad
- I knew it would be hard
- They sent me off to Baghdad
- I knew it would be bad."
His words and those of other US soldiers of current and past wars are featured in a website dedicated to the "Poet Warriors," a creation of an American journalist who wants to highlight the sensitive, creative side of hardened US soldiers.
"I think there is a certain concept, since, I think, (the) Vietnam (War), that soldiers are all brutal. It is not true at all," said Kristin Johnson, a journalist and writer from Palm Springs, California who created the website www.poetwarriorproject.com.
"These soldiers are so eloquent and brilliant, and moving in their expression. Warriors can be poets, warriors can be scholars," Johnson told AFP.
The idea came to her after a friend who works at the Pentagon had received a poem written by a young soldier before he left for Iraq.
Her website currently has only a handful of poems, including from a Vietnam War veteran who writes:
"Our dead lie uneasy
- They toss and turn
- In our heads and ask
- 'Why?'"
"There are so many wonderful stories and wonderful thoughts from these soldiers," said Johnson, whose father and uncle were in the military. She wants to feature poems from veterans from other US wars.
"My hope was that I would be able to get some poetry from the greatest generation, because they are after all the greatest generation," she said.
A US Army veteran, Alex Gonzalez, wrote her a letter saying her project was "noble."
"As a former military man, I remember writing poems on those long nights away from home," he wrote in the letter posted on her other website, www. poemsforyou.com. "Yes, there are many writers, scholars and poets among the military members. We just have to find them."
There are currently about 140,000 US soldiers in Iraq. Nearly 1,800 have been killed since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
"I was always told that war is hell
- I have so many stories that hurt to tell
- I can't wait to be back home
- I really hope these thoughts are gone," Hart writes.
"The other day some friends went home
- because of an ambush now they're gone
- That makes me think all over again
- they (sic) way things were and could have been."
Amid "rockets overhead," he says he wishes he was home.
But, Hart laments, his "lady" wrote him a letter, telling him
"she's gonna bail
- She said it's too hard and too tough
- it hurts too much, she's had enough
- No more sitting on my front porch
- chilling with my lady
- No more listening to the DJ
- all night long."
He continues,
"Today I'm going home
- but all I've had is gone
- Everyone's happy they're going home
- I'm just not ready to be alone."
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AFPLifestyle-US-Iraq-military-poetry
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