Doug Rawlings Poetry and More...

Cầu Tre (Bamboo Bridge)
Conversations between a Vietnamese Refugee
and an American Veteran

Told in Poetry and Prose

"How could we create a more peaceful world? Perhaps, if we live in reciprocity with the earth, the water and each other and only take what we need and not any more, we could create a more peaceful world. I am inspired by indigenous poet-scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, and think that perhaps, if we live with an allegiance not to nations or governments or religions but to gratitude, we could create a more peaceful world."

— Teresa Mei Chuc

"Of course for many exposed to war, it never ends. The physical dangers and traumas are gone, but they are often supplanted by the psychological demons that rise up in our dreams and sometimes in our daily lives. How to come to terms with our participation in war? I often think that we who have gone to war have suffered (and continue to suffer) through existential identity crises. Am I that person huddled down in a bunker, or am I that person walking down a crowded city street? Maybe I’m both. Or neither. And how do I 'compartmentalize' war experiences so that I can control them, rather than have them control me? Underlying all of this is an interesting dynamic — I do want America to realize that my life was torn out of my hands to 'serve' nefarious ends, yet, at the same time, I don’t want anybody to know. I want to be 'normal.' I want to be left alone. However, as a person struggling to be a peace activist, I realize that my war experiences can often offer a different perspective that might prove to be useful."

— Doug Rawlings

"She's become insane ….unable to sleep for fifteen days, believing herself to be a pampered dog that could only eat bread and milk. Not being given these, she refused to eat and became so weak she couldn't talk. When the wind blew she wanted to fly.”

Even tigers in cages
are not shackled like this.
Burning lime poured over
their heads through the steel
bars above them. Above,
the footsteps, the waiting pail,
the long sticks used to poke and beat
the emaciated and festering bodies.
Bodies missing three fingers, bodies
with skull slightly split open.
Yearning for the lush green forests
of their childhoods and the blue,
blue sky where bodies are falling
from helicopters.

So I was maybe all of twenty-one
when they whipped me
into some kind of soul-less shape
Yet another one of America's
weeping mothers' sons
Sent forth into this world
to raze, pillage, and rape

And now it's coming on
to another Christmas Eve
And songs of joy and peace
fill up our little town
How I ask myself
could I possibly believe
I could do what I did
and not reap what I had sown

In that land far away
from what I call home
A grandfather leads
his granddaughter by the hand
Into a field where we did
what had to be done

They trip into a searing heat
brighter than a thousand suns