Stripped of their ancestral languages generations ago, the Lumbee Indians of Robeson Count, North Carolina, carved out a unique dialect of English to maintain their linguistic identity. The story of Lumbee English is one of the most remarkable narratives of linguistic adaptability and cultural perseverance ever documented in the history of American English dialects.

I started to make this about my life. You know, how I grew up, what happened to me to shape and mold my current personality, where is the puppy Grandma gave me, why do I look so much like the mailman, what happened to my first two failed marriages, how did being in the war in Vietnam curve my brain and so on. But, I don't think there was anything in those years that was traumatic enough to make me the way I am today, at 63 years old. Instead, I want to share what I've learned in my life and pass it along to all the people who have solid, pre-arranged, work-until you die lives.

In a battle, seconds seem like hours. Actions and reactions occur a thousand times a minute. Every move a soldier makes may be his last, if he isn't thinking. Every time he aims his weapon at the enemy, he may be violating an entire value system established in his personality very early in life. Every time a soldier kills, his moral fiber is changed. The quote "It was either him or you," is constantly thrown at the soldier as some sort of consolation or rationalization for the taking of another human being's life.

The poems offered in this book don't try to find answers, nor do they ask any of those questions we, as a society, are never able to answer. The poems in this book are offered as one person's observation/opinion of a war, expressed in song form.