You Don't Get Me
I have received a request from a student for information about my poem "You Don't Get Me." Here is what I wrote in reply.
In 1987, nineteen years after Vietnam, I was asleep in my bed in Perth when I had a terrible dream. It was quite common in those days for me to have dreams that consisted entirely of people trying to kill me, and me trying to find ways to escape. I used to call this my recurring paranoid dream. On this one night however, the dream took a disturbing step in a new direction. A bomb exploded in my house, and I was sent flying, in a ball of fire, crashing through a glass window. At this point I would expect to wake up, but my unconscious mind, the director of this dream, kept me flying through the air and thinking about my impending death. I came to the point where I had to accept that there was no way I could survive this fiery explosion, and I was about to die. At that moment I suddenly found myself wide awake, sitting bolt upright in my bed. I was trembling, and my body and sheets were drenched with sweat.
Horrifying though the dream was, I found that the more I thought about it, the more I felt that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Eventually I made a connection between the explosion in my dream and an explosion at Fire Support Base Balmoral in May 1968, when I thought I was going to die. You can read about that incident on my web site at this link.
I came to the conclusion that somewhere in my subconscious mind I had confronted the possibility of my own death way back in 1968, but that the confrontation had been left unresolved. The dream seemed to be something I needed in order to resolve that confrontation. Those thoughts were the origins of the poem “You Don’t Get Me.” As I started to write the poem, I was also aware of the high suicide rate in the Vietnam veteran community. Indeed, the suicide of a friend and colleague, Phill Thompson, had been one of the factors that caused me to leave Sydney and move to Perth at the end of 1986. I had been National Secretary of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia during the peak years of the Agent Orange controversy from 1983 to ‘86, while Phill was the National President. He was also an inspirational role model for me.
The poem addresses Death as a person, and ends with a defiant affirmation. It is written in blank verse: that is, iambic pentameter with no rhyme. There is no particular reason for this; it is just the way the words came to me.
You can find further biographical information about me on my web site in the “My Life Story” pages.
I hope you find this information helpful.
Lachlan Irvine.
http://lachlanirvine.tripod.com
YOU DON'T GET ME
You took so many, as you always do,
Reaping your harvest on the battlefield;
Your youthful crop too prematurely picked,
Not yet prepared to meet you face to face.
There were times when you thought you had me too,
But though I felt your touch and heard your voice
Somehow I managed to avoid your blade,
Leaving our confrontation unresolved.
I saw your face so clearly in the night,
Illuminated by the fire of battle;
Your voice a whisper as the mortars fell,
Exploding into laughter as they hit.
When fighting finally came to an end
You followed all the weary soldiers home;
Knowing the battles they were yet to face
Would mean more harvest seasons still to come.
When wounds of war were deep and slow to heal,
You tempted them with promises of peace;
Relief eternal from the pain of life
For those who felt unable to fight on.
You must have thought you had me in your sights
When you began to strike those close to me;
You even managed to invade my dreams,
But this is where our confrontation ends.
I survived the war, and I survived the peace,
And there are many others just like me;
As we reach out and as we find each other
Our strength increases with each passing day.
And we defy you with this battle cry:
I AM A SURVIVOR - YOU DON'T GET ME!
Lachlan Irvine
In 1987, nineteen years after Vietnam, I was asleep in my bed in Perth when I had a terrible dream. It was quite common in those days for me to have dreams that consisted entirely of people trying to kill me, and me trying to find ways to escape. I used to call this my recurring paranoid dream. On this one night however, the dream took a disturbing step in a new direction. A bomb exploded in my house, and I was sent flying, in a ball of fire, crashing through a glass window. At this point I would expect to wake up, but my unconscious mind, the director of this dream, kept me flying through the air and thinking about my impending death. I came to the point where I had to accept that there was no way I could survive this fiery explosion, and I was about to die. At that moment I suddenly found myself wide awake, sitting bolt upright in my bed. I was trembling, and my body and sheets were drenched with sweat.
Horrifying though the dream was, I found that the more I thought about it, the more I felt that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Eventually I made a connection between the explosion in my dream and an explosion at Fire Support Base Balmoral in May 1968, when I thought I was going to die. You can read about that incident on my web site at this link.
I came to the conclusion that somewhere in my subconscious mind I had confronted the possibility of my own death way back in 1968, but that the confrontation had been left unresolved. The dream seemed to be something I needed in order to resolve that confrontation. Those thoughts were the origins of the poem “You Don’t Get Me.” As I started to write the poem, I was also aware of the high suicide rate in the Vietnam veteran community. Indeed, the suicide of a friend and colleague, Phill Thompson, had been one of the factors that caused me to leave Sydney and move to Perth at the end of 1986. I had been National Secretary of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia during the peak years of the Agent Orange controversy from 1983 to ‘86, while Phill was the National President. He was also an inspirational role model for me.
The poem addresses Death as a person, and ends with a defiant affirmation. It is written in blank verse: that is, iambic pentameter with no rhyme. There is no particular reason for this; it is just the way the words came to me.
You can find further biographical information about me on my web site in the “My Life Story” pages.
I hope you find this information helpful.
Lachlan Irvine.
http://lachlanirvine.tripod.com
YOU DON'T GET ME
You took so many, as you always do,
Reaping your harvest on the battlefield;
Your youthful crop too prematurely picked,
Not yet prepared to meet you face to face.
There were times when you thought you had me too,
But though I felt your touch and heard your voice
Somehow I managed to avoid your blade,
Leaving our confrontation unresolved.
I saw your face so clearly in the night,
Illuminated by the fire of battle;
Your voice a whisper as the mortars fell,
Exploding into laughter as they hit.
When fighting finally came to an end
You followed all the weary soldiers home;
Knowing the battles they were yet to face
Would mean more harvest seasons still to come.
When wounds of war were deep and slow to heal,
You tempted them with promises of peace;
Relief eternal from the pain of life
For those who felt unable to fight on.
You must have thought you had me in your sights
When you began to strike those close to me;
You even managed to invade my dreams,
But this is where our confrontation ends.
I survived the war, and I survived the peace,
And there are many others just like me;
As we reach out and as we find each other
Our strength increases with each passing day.
And we defy you with this battle cry:
I AM A SURVIVOR - YOU DON'T GET ME!
Lachlan Irvine
posted by Lachlan Irvine | 9:22 PM
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