We will not be written in books,
As names,
But numbers.
We will fade into the dust of time,
Our sweat dried from the escaping cracks
Of ground.
And we will carry whatever remnants
We have left,
In the coffers,
Brazen with smiles behind broken lives.
We hide in the early hours of the night,
Our faces enamoured with killing objects
on digial screens.
Yelling into a microphone “fuck you dude!”
Bitter between championed teams.
Mountain Dew fuels aggression and suppression of innocence stolen.
Chips are crisp with salt and plucked from fingers that pulled triggers.
Memories blare like trumpets inside lucid dreams,
And a drink soothes the nerves of a dream deterred,
Or so we heard.
We pray that light will shine,
Maybe for a few precious moments our minds drift off into a bliss of calm and contentment.
If we are mindful maybe our resentments will transform into forgiveness.
And addiction doesn’t run rampant,
Unchained in a field riddled with avoidance,
Transported to console the suffering.
Still in the lonely hours we needle every thread that quilts us to a time,
Where heroes dined on succulent dishes of mission.
Now we are confined to living our former lives through pictures,
Depicting a time where life and death were a line shorter than this sentence.
War Poems 
It drives me wildly crazy that people choose to stay blissfully ignorant of what our soldiers experience. Even as a journalist, I know people have no chance of learning anything unless they seek it straight from someone like you, who dares to express the inexpressible.
Then again, it’s hard enough to acknowledge one’s own dark side let alone peering into that of another human’s. I think civilians are afraid to see what’s within the heart and mind of a warrior. It’s too bad, because they’d find someone very much like themselves who wants simply to live without pain and suffering.
Beautiful writing. Thanks, always, for sharing.
Thank you very much for those words. That’s why I write to show the real struggles internally Veterans face.
I talk to my husband about how different it is, civilian world and “over there” and I feel like civilians just don’t get it until they’re close enough to it. We still don’t really get it, but poems like these makes it easier for us to understand the people closest to us in ways that are so difficult without an insight like this.
Thank you. This keeps me writing. That has been my inspiration to writing these poems; to give others an insight to what Veterans feel.