Poetry

two wars, two wounds
four deployments in ten years
the trauma, the scars
the waste, the tears

a soldier driven to madness
numb warriors driven to drink
a lost decade of blood-lust
gives a nation pause to think

how virtue becomes nightmare
how ideals implode and die
how the paradox of intention
is undermined with hidden lies

fighting wars to kill terrorists
on obscure Afghan plains
generations of young ones
sentenced to death and pain

the tramp of bloodied footprints
march strait to a profiteer’s bank
depositing lucrative spoils of war
fill contracts to build more tanks

woe to the battlefield heroes
who answered a country’s call
decorated with broken families
and home mortgage defaults

a minds discombobulation
nurses a spiritual malaise
fuels emotional breakdowns
kindles smoldering rage

kneeling to medieval potentates
to win hearts of corrupt Afghans
guard Loya Jirgas of narco kingpins
spill blood to defend tribal lands

the call of deranged duty
maniacal as a video game
lines of the real and phantasmagoric
firm only in minds of the insane

the Skype connection broken
won’t see the kids face tonight
a landmine took a buddy’s leg
some hooch will set things right

the brain starts quickly buzzin
a zillion scenes flash in the head
better paint blood on the door jams
the grim reaper gonna thresh the dead

don a suit of Kevlar armor
the invincible angel stalks
to avenge blatant inequities
he suffered here and in Iraq

a land washed by bloody oceans
scarlet splashed on every door
death prowls along dark roads
a passover finds no safe abode

the screaming eyes of the angel
inflamed with red spikes of hate
seeks to still the heaving roil
his raging heart could not abate

he murdered a sleeping family
and found another to share its fate
a desperate act to cleanse himself
to find a profane state of grace

this pilgrim of death was not finished
cool retribution must square accounts
a burnt offering to the Lords of War
speak the deeds sermon on the mount

dragging live and dead bodies
stacking unholy piles in the hall
no angel to stop this Abraham's hand
this grotesque executioners pall

Staff Sargent Bales was arrested
He now sits in the prison of his thoughts
does his trembling mind have knowledge
of what his awful hands have wrought?

or does a trembling nation
so much in love with war
understand its complicity
with what it should abhor?

the blood of innocents drip
from every American sill
as the passover approaches
the stain invites an angel’s ill will

Music Selection: 
Charles Gounod,
Funeral March of a Marionette

Oakland
3/19/12
jbm