I Can’t Write

By Richard Wangard



Bullshit!  If I can, you can!  All you have to do is apply ass to chair.  When you do you open up your entire mind and share it with us---all your fellow vets!  And you can write about anything you want!  NO RESTRICTIONS!  Better yet, if you do this magazine is crazy enough to publish it!  They have bn publishing my stuff for the last 10 years.



Over the years I have written a bout Nam and the military, about stress going on in my life, about friends, Harley Davidsons, trips, family member, 50 years of PTSD and any other thing that has tripped my trigger!  And Veterans Voices has published a great deal of it, always making me glad that I wrote it all down.  Now even after I kick off to heaven and Harleys I can leave something behind that the kids and grandkids can read if they so choose.  Stuff they never even knew about me and the life I led!



How do I encourage you, my fellow vet, to write it down?!  How about that shipmate who taught you the ropes?  A Marine who had your back?  The Coast Guard swimmer who put it all on the line so “Others May Live.”  Maybe just maybe you, yeah you, owe us a poem or story or maybe some of your talented art work!  You know we ne er stop being brothers and sisters and let me tell you one more time—YOUR STORIES, YOUR POEMS, YOUR ARTWORK CAN BE ANYTHING AT ALL!!  Whatever is on your mind in the comfort of your home-in your own space and if you are anything like me at all the most important thing of all---- NO RULES!  You write what you want to write!  About anything you want!  PTSD has been a big subject for me and how I have dealt with it for 55 years.  I can only tell you it has greatly improved over the last 10 years I have been writing.  Is it gone?  Hell no!  but it has improved over any other treatment program I have been in because I write.  Oh, yeah, I still seek help-counselling- I am no fool.  But my writing is truly what has gotten me through.  So, vet take it from an old Nam Airman, apply ass to chair and watch the magic happen!