The lighted cries of homecoming and well,
Flesh crusted, cake with a million yard stares,
Epics written on the back of men,
Not old enough to dream. What’s a Hero?
What is it for me that I should see?
Old medals that rusts, and a gut that purges,
The drunken youth that fuel the absurdity…
That Parades could drown out the massive strain,
We’ve come home to a war of our own,
Man vs Man, Ideas vs Ideas,
Dogma vs Domga…what’s a hero?
We live in a time where many people have a platform to voice their hopes, wishes, dreams, and wants. We also live in a time where people can also quite effectively voice their disdain, displeasure, insults, and turmoil.
We have a choice to engage in the negative energy that we encounter. We have a choice to be offended or not be offended. We often forget that we don’t have to take everything that is directed towards us. Not every impulse needs a similar reaction. We have a choice to engage.
Hurry up and wait,
While she flies overhead;
Our chariot to the promise land,
Sand shocked,
Tired eyes,
Feather laughter conceals
Our eternity…
Drink more water,
Stomachs lust for temptations,
Backs to backs,
Brothers,
Different mothers,
Same DNA,
All waiting…
I saw you,
In the little things:
The way I cross my Ts,
My hand still shakes,
As it dances with anxiety and memory,
You’d say “I’ll never leave you…”,
But war made you a liar,
As it always does.
I thought about,
What we’ve become,
When soft lies become,
Subtle fun.
One who yells loudest,
Has already won,
And the search for truth,
Is an amusing one.
We’ve grown distant,
in teams of sorts,
Enslaved by emotions,
Agendas,
And retorts,
Friends become enemies,
In a civil struggle,
For love,
Acceptance,
Deflection from the lives we lead,
We plead for wars to cease,
While we fight ourselves in deplored streets,
Courage to dismiss,
And not to question,
Our own ideals,
Left uncontested.
We fear the real,
For we must begin again,
The arduous path of discovery,
That has no goal to win.
Boots approved,
Like a scab once removed;
A tank dances on pavement,
Click-clink Click-clink,
A pirouette of massive grace,
Click-clack Click-clack,
Metal and asphalt,
Commune in a torrent love affair,
Young and despondent,
An adolescent praise,
I thought I’d miss it,
The way youth burned my hands,
Our hearts fell in love with a cure,
That normalcy couldn’t endure,
Would write to you with inexbriant praises,
Between the Arabian desolation,
You’d forget my name,
Through western chaos,
Things changed…
Boots approved,
I was once removed,
And came back with someone
I never knew.
I walked along a trail,
Going nowhere;
The Fall’s delirium
Keeping me at bay,
The leaves cry beneath my steps,
I wonder if they had any falling regrets,
I carved you into a tree,
To leave you where the timber sleeps,
And gave you back to a world,
That knows not the way it seeps,
My breath slow and somber,
To the details that lay ahead,
To the russling of the sheets,
That muddles the beds we made,
The creek whimpers to a sigh,
From the currents the day has gave,
I crossed paths with a squirrel,
Who nibbled at the fruits of the sky,
Who tussled the soil of the earth,
And ran from my prying eyes,
He left me alone,
As alone as I ever was,
To devour the recompense,
Of shaming grooves,
And things untold,
Only to the wind,
That wonders if it blows again.
The hills have eyes,
And I am taunted by the buzzing of insects,
Who are nature’s daredevils.
I brush away the serene annoyance
Of a summer’s day;
A woodpecker selects his dinner,
Through bangs and scrapings,
Of a warm breeze that engulfs me
Like a warm blanket under a winter’s tree,
I ride like a cowboy,
Chewspit and all,
Gunslinging through the hills before night falls,
I ask the same questions,
Questions that have no answers,
The blood of thorns that drips down my legs,
Tells me that Earth feels my pain,
Like a dunkard I am born again,
Trees become my pews in which I repent against,
The hills have eyes,
As I mutter through its rich sublime,
I am at my most freest,
When my heart is blind.
I think of you,
Through the mulberry trees,
Low and deep,
Like your love for me,
Berries as full as your lips,
Seeds as hard as your words,
The sweetness of your touch,
Drips down my lips,
Like the blood of a bully,
Who has done too much,
I lay under you,
And you shade me
From rays determined to darken my face,
I pluck the best parts of you,
From callous fingers red and blistered,
That strum taut strings,
That gives your voice its cadence to ring,
When your branches are bare,
And has lost all its fruit to share,
I’ll till the weeds that cross your feet,
Waiting til winter’s edge encounters its spring defeat,
And think of you through the mulberry trees,
Where the sun sits low,
And the moon begins to sing.
The smoldering of ashes,
Once bright and dim,
Now frail and brittle like life’s little wind,
A monument built upon the backs of dirt,
A breeze assaults in,
Flanking to scatter what little respect we’ve hoarded,
We love what we do not know,
And grieve for things we dare not show,
Like a blow shocking and riveting,
We clutch to save the breath
That escapes through crevices of night’s summer’s edge,
The things we once gave our lives to,
Are bled through tunnels of false imprisonments:
Searching like a miner’s light to ores of redemption,
We dig till our fingers are bare of innocence,
While succession waves like a flag of pride;
Bowing firm to our dripping obedience,
Towards traditions drowned in puddles of hate,
Like a man in no man’s land,
We dig trenches to shelter us from the shelling of our dissonance,
As shells are washed away by the Fogginess of our cognitivism,
As the Salmon returns to the streams of birth,
We are ready to mate with elusiveness,
Burning the vestiges,
Until they become ashes,
Settling.
War Poems 