Where did you go my brother?
My brother of my youth, where are you?
Where's the boy that cried for fallen birds,
The young boy that everyone loved.
The one that song in the chorus at “Live Stone M. B Church
The brother that loved Debra Pamela and Glenn’s cousin.
Who would have moved for her the earth?
Where did he go?
Where is that little boy who tenderly saved a kitten from drowning?
The big brother that grew from that little boy that dared me to mess around
When we went to waistline parties?
Where’s my brother that left me for Vietnam?
I need to know for he never came back.
Instead the shadow of image fills his skin, his voice but not his mind
My brother disappeared within that section of time.
This young man that came home unto us
Have not my brothers heart, for he do not know me,
He does not love as my brother loved
My big brother who’s really my little brother
and wept for other pains
My brother Uncle Sam stole
I do not know this man that's come
into my mothers home.
Did you leave him in that place Vietnam called hell?
Do tell me please I am tired of being deceived.
Where's the boy who loved with a passion,
That all consuming obsession burning,
Crying at the beauty of others salvation
When he saw them to Christ coming?
My handsome big brother that always felt every
Brothers and sister's tears as his own.
My dear brother Willie what have life done to you?
Where did we go wrong?
Where’s my big brother that lived inside that little boy
Who offered tenderness to the dying?
And wept before a crucifix for what I did,
At Rev. Jackson Church on Ogden and Millard
Where is my big brother that had all that heart?
You was but a little boy yourself back then
A young man who wanted no man to die in sin.
The army stole him away from us.
They took him away on a plane one day
Not a one of us had anything to say.
And there they have held him fast having stolen my
Big brother Willie away..
Where’s my brother who begged for mercy for the lost before the Lord
I saw him in my sleep one night so long ago.
I was impregnated, but was hardly out of my teens,
that’s when I saw him in my dream
Blown off tanks fighting a war, running for his life, buddies and bodies
Fallen all over him, as he called upon the Lord.
For Mercy, protection quoting psalms 91 couldn't afford to show any,
blood drenched my brothers hands to the elbows, as he screamed out to the Father
No more, No more, Dear Lord No more.
I felt much of their pains or ending and the prayers my brother Willie was sending.
I could not tell mama, for she already knew that the fighting around you
would not take you physically but would destroy a great part of you mentally.
Where is my brother I cried back then?
Where did they take you and where have he gone?
Your sadness is a sin. You have fought for your country.
You have shredded your blood, you have sacrificed, your youth,
I can still hear your cries. I can still feel your fear.
No human being but Joyce have ever seen the pain that you endured once you came home.
This is all wrong, ...so wrong,,,,my brother never came home.
Your fear kept you alive. When you came home the truth you did hide.
I could still feel the spirit of fear and death as they followed you back to the U.S.A.
I saw your face of black and green hid behind icy cold fear,
I heard you cry out to God for your soul.
While Mama begged God not to let you die.
It was then I learned that God did not live in any sky.
I thought you might want to know these things.
These things that my brother Willie can never know
for the person that came in his stead brought back to us a different head,
a different heart no matter how I've prayed to God.
Don't get wrong I am happy God sent your body home,
I just wanted to share with you that I know
that Vietnam took the little boy, my big brother away, frighten him,
stolen his life and his pain he will not share with me.
My brother Willie went to Hell for a world that does not have a soul,
a world that is slowly growing cold,
a world filled with aliens that does not know our heavenly Father.
Your heart I watched as it became a calloused work of stone,
in order to survive the truth you had to hide.
I questioned many times who is this unfeeling young man
that returned in the skin of my brother Willie?
they taught you destruction
they taught you to kill.
they taught you that you was not suppose to feel
to feel would be to die.
while you yet live my brother Willie died.
I understand it was your duty as it filled you with pain.
violence became your nature feeling you with rage.
I can say these things to you now that we have aged.
Are you in there my little brother?
Are you hidden inside holding my big brother Willie hostile?
Where's the boy that cried when one of us was hurt,
the brother that worked in the fields to help our parents
buy that much need pair pants, blouse or shirt?
Where is my brother Willie?
Did he get lost killing crying men?
I heard stories that he died. but I need to know
Did
He died lonely in an unknown jungle
taking lives to keep his from being taken
fighting for a country that didn't care what happened to
him once he returned?
I could not find him to take him home.
I woke up and my brother Willie never came home.
everything inside of me told me my big brother was gone.
tell me, I am wrong. tell me, tell me, what happen
when you left home?
Are you my brother? Is he hidden so well inside?
Let me speak to him once more before I leave this lonely world
He left me alone to journey alone.
i can't rest until he comes home.
Willie promised me that he would soon be home
but he haven't come.
he never came
instead you came and I don't know you.
you don't know me
you won't even sit in the same room with me.
unless it's necessary, and even then you are silent.
See I have been so lonely with the family of ten, since he left me
To go and fight a war that was not his own.
Are you Willie, my big brother?
Can't you remember what you promised me?
If you are he
answer me
Willie, Willie please come home
we're incomplete
the eleven of us goes to Mama on
holidays and watch this stranger take your seat.
He doesn't even eat the foods you eat.
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