In glorious swoops of courage, the birds’ talons grasp tightly to bloodied men.
Fearful.
Hopeful.
Their silver wind of relief has finally begun to blow.

Though always late, the hawks arrive just in time.
Looking back, the stories speak gruesome truth:
X-Ray was Hell; a no-man’s-land of loss and meaningless fire.
The shed of red life, salted tears, and deep-tissue scars
Has been argued to be worth the ****, sweat, and northward hate for which they feel so deeply;
Debated from the lips and tongues of penguins who live in an idol home of marble and comfort,
A place where mice need not be afraid of man nor hawk,
But should be always mindful of the snake.

The question stands:
What is this all for?

The golden years of reminiscence have passed us by;
Boys have become men, men have become droids.
And these ironclad mechanisms of sacrifice have leaked,
Laughed in the yellow faces of destruction,
Cried in the sweet solace of dreams,
Yet, they remain stoic in their duties.

They are forced to rust.
Forced to fall apart.
Forced to learn
How to replace and be replaced,
How to break and how to mend,
How to hang on.
How to let go.

In the dense forests of struggle,
They play hide and seek with figures unknown:
silhouettes of themselves and each other, as well as those who they are obliged to send to a boggy grave.

They play this game,
They lose this game,
Handing life and limb for a cause which is not their own;
Hardly any cause at all,
But a cause manufactured to rescue that of another.

Brothers departed kiss the white clouds of peace,
Thanking God for the homecoming.
Men enduring thank God for another night amidst their dread,
So to savor every last breath.
Pray for death, hope to live.

Beg the question:
What the Hell am I doing here,
On some other man’s land,
Where my nose does not belong?
Innocent farmers.
Or are they suckers?
Or are WE suckers?
Pawns.
Pawns on a chessboard. Dots and arrows on paper maps.
Statistics.
We’re just a game played by children half an Earth away.
A game where
Some men are lions, some men are wolves,
But all men have learned—if not by now, then soon—
That “friends” equals pain.
And pain is suffering.

Pleading for the answers,
When’s it subside?
When’s it take a back seat so then we can move forward with our lives?

It doesn’t.

It engulfs you.

It becomes your life.

Your dreams.

Your stories.

It becomes you.
Old, frail, desensitized, and stone-faced you.
And at such a young age.

“War is Hell, soldier.”
Welcome to Vietnam.

Firelight, ‘fading quickly from the quiet night,
O, fair queen,
Quell my fearful dreams, and
Be here while I fall asleep.

Flame
Slowly snuffs itself,
Choking for oxygen, so to stay alive,
But alas, at last, it dies.

No longer was her stay
Than but one phase,
As the moon hid away
Into the black.
A mockery in the sky,
She darkens the dusk, and
Passes us by as she tries to keep it alight.
But alas, at last, it dies.

As departs the dark,
Ambitiously arrives the day,
Who leaves but no need for fire’s blaze to stay.
Sunrise, sweetly presenting in sightly colour,
She slightly flutters
Peacefully
Into uniform blue,
And soon,
A new slate.

Last night, fire did fade swiftly,
Whistling wonderfully as her ungodly gasp failed to remain alive;
To keep alight.
O, she tried,
But alas, at last, it died.
And just as so, she and I.

But what is love?

Whether love for tomorrow
Or love for a night,
Love is love.
Right?

I remember not too long ago I was just a little boy playing ball in the park it was Little League in the heat anyone in south Florida will tell you “it’s normal” and it’s true it really is normal.

Then it began to rain lightning struck the adjacent field and left a **** in right somehow for some reason the lightning warning system never sounded its fifteen second alarm I wonder why.

Imagine this

A crash as loud as if you were wearing a stainless steel stockpot and someone struck it so hard with a metal spoon and soon you were knocked so silly you felt like the Liberty Bell the day it rung then cracked during the funeral of former Chief Justice John Marshall and you thought you were dead too.

I thought I was a goner so I bolted to the dugout like lightning no pun intended but I didn’t want to be toast.

As the team sat there each about eleven and twelve years old we counted seconds between lighting and thunder between light and sound and what we felt were going to be the very last seconds of our young little lives how naïve we were.

One lightning strike cracked so bright it flashed me to today and here I am at twenty-two not dead just yet and I’m not quite sure how or why maybe there’s a purpose maybe there’s a meaning to life it’s a philosophical thing to sit and contemplate existentialism is such a weird weird thing I think.

I have come to believe that there are multiple reasons for life and one’s to die one’s to survive one’s to figure out every answer to every question and acquiesce all that which satisfies our wants and needs and one’s to love and give and take and share a life and one’s to see all there is to see like cityscapes and oceans and stars and countries one’s to see even more like frowns and births and smiles and deaths and one’s to eat all there is to eat and to drink all there is to drink until we finally figure out a way to accept the inevitable.

Or is the inevitable not inevitable?

What if there’s a way to live forever and there are no consequences extraneous to those of regular everyday life and you can choose to accept the inevitable when you choose to realize that it sure is inevitable?

Ooh-aah! Ain’t that a concept?

This is not quite what I had in mind at birth I thought it would be smooth sailing between fits of crying and long hours of slumber and meals and short naps and diaper changes and seeing my parents’ faces and those of all others gazing about me in awe and wonder and amazement and pride and love I was a deity!

Relative to twenty-two years one figures out that being a god is very short-lived and that twenty-two years ain’t very long hardly even a quarter of the way to the brink of a timely death.

Maybe when we’re babies we’re gods and idols and think about this babies can rule the world if only they knew they command the highest of all expenses in the whole entire world and families and friends willingly shell out money and goods and services for such a tiny little sack of fat and muscle and fastly-forming bones and brains.
Babies are ******* gods.

But gods no less.

My God I wish I was a baby once again.

But I’m twenty-two and slowly but surely growing old living through each quickening day by day by day and so on and so forth it’s been a fun trip so far and I am sure not done so long as there isn’t another flash from the lightning to send me straight to forty-four or eighty-eight—it doubles every time ain’t that a ****** shame?