Si Kahn Lyrics
Courage
Hunter
"At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, 'there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger to prevent deployment,' (senior Navy psychiatrist) Dr. Geiger said in an interview." --New York Times, April 9, 2007
Si gives us a tragic glimpse into the wounds that are left, all around us, to be carried as a burden by those who come back scarred in ways we cannot see on the outside, and how we are all diminished by that injustice. It is an intimate snapshot into the breaking of a person by war. One person. And we are left to intuit the awful price we are paying every day by multiplying this intimate snapshot by the thousands. Read the rest
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I grew up hunting with my father
In a little mountain town not far from here
When I turned six he gave me my first rifle
I was eight years old when I killed my first deer
Dad said I had an itchy trigger finger
We needed meat and I had steady aim
But if I could not kill an animal cleanly
I'd give it up and never hunt again
Somehow I barely made it through high school
I dreamed about escaping every day
I couldn't see me working at the prison
I joined the Army just to get away
The mountains of Iraq felt like my hometown
The valleys and the ridges looked the same
I knew that I was born to be a soldier
I figured it was just like hunting game
I saw him in my scope across the valley
I squeezed the trigger slowly and he fell
But in that moment I felt something breaking
And my immortal soul went straight to hell
The Bible says it is a sin to murder
I figured that in war it was all right
But always in my dreams I see him falling
His blood soaks my pillow every night
The doctors say that I'm just post-traumatic
They tell me that with time the mist will clear
But they don't understand the things that happen
When you can't tell a person from a deer
Some nights I dream I'm hunting with my father
Some nights I dream they've sent me back to war
Dad said I had an itchy trigger finger
So I cut it off and I will hunt no more
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