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Draft Board Blues
DRAFT BOARD BLUES is more than the story of a draft dodger. It’s about a war and a generation’s response to our debacle in Vietnam. As with all wars, old men declared war and then shoved young men into harm’s way. And as always, it was mostly the poor and the most desperate who fought the war. The losses were heavy on our side, but for the Vietnamese, they were staggering, unthinkable. Cooperman’s narrator at first passively acquiesces to serving and probably dying in that conflagration. But when he gets a brief glimpse that there are other possibilities, he decides he’d rather die than have the army or the Viet Cong kill him. With wit, outrage, irony, and “a touch of the blues,” DRAFT BOARD BLUES chronicles that struggle. To read it is to be thrown back into a tumultuous time, a time not so different from our own.
82 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 13, 2019
Glad to say that I was not American during the sixties
The truth about war is that the people who do not have to risk their lives,mental and physical well being (politicians and the captains of all industries ) are the victors and enjoy the spoils of war. We Are Right (WAR) is believed by both sides at war.
The truth about war is that the people who do not have to risk their lives,mental and physical well being (politicians and the captains of all industries ) are the victors and enjoy the spoils of war. We Are Right (WAR) is believed by both sides at war.
March 14, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
SOME OF THE ABLES ON THE WALL
Among the far too many boys and men
who left their only lives in Vietnam,
just the ghosts of their names returned again:
like the Ables, carved into the Wall’s calm
and cool-dark stone: Bobby Lee, Charles Edward,
David Anthony, Frank Wayne, Jim Farrell,
and more of that family: scattered shards
of the Ables, dead in a jungle hell.
Not one of them able to leave the Wall,
but pinned like butterflies there, for all time,
their names frozen by printing, neat and small
to last long as hard stone, longer than rhyme.
Small comfort to be carved in silent black,
no Ables able to get their lives back.
GUYS MY AGE
I see them on the street in their wheelchairs,
guys my age, their gray hair in ponytails,
American flags taped to their rear handles.
In summer their T-shirts might read,
“I know I’m going to Heaven,
because I served my time in Hell.”
They’re the ones who went to Nam,
believing the lies Johnson, then Nixon, spewed
like volcanic ash; or not having a choice
against the draft’s giant lava flow
that swept them away on a killing current.
They came home in pieces, given wheelchairs.
This guy’s chair is motorized;
it looks like the latest model, almost
something you might ride for fun.
I’ve drifted into the crosswalk
in my hurry to finish my morning errands,
then drive home for lunch.
Seeing him, I back up, so he won’t
have to swerve into oncoming traffic.
As he whirs past, he nods in thanks
for my courtesy. I nod back, the least
I can do for him, who every day
of his life lives the war I dodged.
SOME OF THE ABLES ON THE WALL
Among the far too many boys and men
who left their only lives in Vietnam,
just the ghosts of their names returned again:
like the Ables, carved into the Wall’s calm
and cool-dark stone: Bobby Lee, Charles Edward,
David Anthony, Frank Wayne, Jim Farrell,
and more of that family: scattered shards
of the Ables, dead in a jungle hell.
Not one of them able to leave the Wall,
but pinned like butterflies there, for all time,
their names frozen by printing, neat and small
to last long as hard stone, longer than rhyme.
Small comfort to be carved in silent black,
no Ables able to get their lives back.
GUYS MY AGE
I see them on the street in their wheelchairs,
guys my age, their gray hair in ponytails,
American flags taped to their rear handles.
In summer their T-shirts might read,
“I know I’m going to Heaven,
because I served my time in Hell.”
They’re the ones who went to Nam,
believing the lies Johnson, then Nixon, spewed
like volcanic ash; or not having a choice
against the draft’s giant lava flow
that swept them away on a killing current.
They came home in pieces, given wheelchairs.
This guy’s chair is motorized;
it looks like the latest model, almost
something you might ride for fun.
I’ve drifted into the crosswalk
in my hurry to finish my morning errands,
then drive home for lunch.
Seeing him, I back up, so he won’t
have to swerve into oncoming traffic.
As he whirs past, he nods in thanks
for my courtesy. I nod back, the least
I can do for him, who every day
of his life lives the war I dodged.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews