Got on a plane in Alabama
Where I was born and reared
Over forty years ago
Got off in Vietnam a place I didn't want to go
I walked into a different world
A world I did not know
A world I would never leave behind for
It grabbed hold of my brain and it buried itself in my mind
Vietnam is a place I never left behind.
It became the real world to me as I ran in its jungles,
And hid in it's bushes
And felt out of its big dangerous trees.
Vietnam a world I got to know
Better than my home town
A place where a boy can't be a boy
And a man doesn't mess around.
My past forever gone –
My youth just disappeared
My daughter her and her mama I left behind
This child I'd never get to know and
She'd never know me.
I could have gone to Cincinnati
With my siblings if I but would
But the Marines needed me
They said they would help make me a man
So I jumped at it and vowed to take a stand
Going to fight a war I didn't understand
I could have stayed in school and finished college
As most of my peers did,
But me I went to serve my country
As they promised me a gig  
See I was brought up differently
I couldn't break the rules –
My daddy a preacher man
My mamma didn't raise no fool
I joined the Marines
And here I got my schooling
Coming home with a PHD
Of straight up misery.
Thirteen months and fifteen days
The last ones were the worst
One minute I'd kneel down and pray
And the next I'd stand and curse -
No place to run to
Where I did not feel that war
When I got home I stayed alone
And checked behind each door
Saigon stayed with me
It would not away
I left Alabama once I got back to the states
Still in Saigon in my head for forty odd years
Still in Saigon where my youth disappeared
In my mind – Saigon wouldn't go away
No matter what I did, no matter what I did say
The ground at home was covered in snow
And I was covered in sweat
My home boys calls me a killer
And my daddy calls me a vet -
Everybody says I'm someone else
And I got sick of all of that
I moved to Chicago and found there's no cure
Moved on to Michigan where I would spend my life
With my daughter Tamala
And would loose my wife
For what was wrong with me
There just wasn't any cure
Saigon filled my mind night and day
With all the past misery
All that ugliness threw out all my good memories
By the time I was forty I told the world around me
Who I was supposed to be
Lil Lionel Bolar backed up by the “B”
Damned if I know who I am
There was only one place I was sure -
When I was still in Saigon
I knew it was me.
I knew I had a war to fight even if it would destroy me
Still in Saigon to day as I lie down in my bed
Drinking beer and gin to kill the demons in my head
I am still in Saigon as I fight with those I love
Praying that the Lord above would heal me
And destroy these enemies In my mind
Every when it rains the smell of the jungle,
Is so clear
I hear the planes and the shell as they go pass my ears
I can't tell anyone truly how I feel
For there's so much shame inside of me
Of all that killing went against all that I was taught
My daddy taught me the good book
But Uncle Sam taught me to war
Afraid some day I'll go insane someday
If I don't take a stand
So I have been fighting every since
Because folks think I am a Lil man-
That's been forty long years ago
And time has gone on by
Now and then I catch myself
Eyes searching through the sky -
All the sounds of long ago
Will be forever in my head
Mingled with the wounded cries
And the silence of the dead -
Because I'm still in Saigon
Even though the war we have won
My body came home to the state where it belong
But the boy who took that flight stayed behind
And one day I know this sickness will steal my mind.