Pluto, Lincoln, ****
covers of National Geographics, still
plastic wrapped, waiting for you

your grandfather
bought you a subscription
for life

he's gone a dozen years
fitting his favorite president would grace one cover
and your enslavement, ****, another

Pluto sits between both on the coffee table
waiting for you also, perhaps feeling like a ******* child,
belatedly told it did not belong

and you feel that far away

if you wake every morning
and do nothing to make your life better
it will not get any better
if you wake every morning
and do something to make your life better
then surely no matter
how bad life might seem right now

it will get better

Gunshots and screams
Are ringing all around,
Neither silence nor peace
Inside me can be found.

Bullets slice through air,
Swift; like a winter wind.
Bodies fall into mud,
Like red autumn leaves.

The odor of their blood,
Brings tears to my eyes
And within them hidden,
The cry, for my fallen allies.

Explosions shake the ground,
Leaving people in distress,
Soldiers moving around,
Like peons in a game of chess.

Corpses are used as shields,
Blocking piercing rounds,
Missiles fall from up high,
Ending lives with heavy sounds.

A ****** pulls the trigger
From deep inside the forest,
Within my chest a raging pain,
Shackles me to enemy soil.

The rainbow-painted sky,
Distant and ever-reaching,
Finally smiles upon me,
It knows I am about to die.