I look at you from obscure corners
Your sight is what keeps me going
Those sly smiles, those carefree eyes
Those loaded remarks are my best mates
If I didn't care, i'd take them from you
I'd make them my own to love and to hate
If I didn't care I'd break my rules
To take you in the most intimate embrace
I'd should show you life as you've not known
I would show you life's pretty face.
If I dint care I'd take a lifetime
To know you bit by bit
But fate and luck have abandoned us...
So we go our own ways to live, alone in a crowd
Alone in a world full of people we pretend to care.

"I tried. I tried. I tried."
A scream so desperate it turns into the grating whine of a whipped dog. The begging in the eyes and the white of gripping knuckles.
"I tried, I promise I tried."
The damage is massive. I cradle the shoulders of the full-grown man in my left arm, my right hand hovering helplessly across where half his body used to be. It's too much. He's shaking, trying to pull himself into my chest, based on the feel of his hands. I find his eyes. He's begging, repeating himself with agonizing desperation. I grip his face firmly in my right hand, smearing blood and sweat. The pressure on his jaw slows his words and he is staring at me with the deep-eyed trust of a loyal hound, sinking into the promise of my unwavering gaze.
"You did well," I murmur, giving his head a gentle shake to emphasize my words. I blink to clear the pooling in my eyes. His mouth is open, slack, but he tries a smile. He is choking. On bone or blood, something I cannot see. His legs **** convulsively, but he doesn't seem to notice. He keeps my eyes. I gently rock his head with my hand and his eyes grow absent. His legs grow still.
I weep into his mangled chest.

***** hands, gun-powder face
Pressed against holy robes,
Begging final forgiveness.

The father holds his son,
The grown boy
Clothed in military brown.

Steady, mourning lips whisper a prayer
Into the ******, sweat-soaked hair.

His life leaking away in the darkness of the stain spreading across his chest,
The soldier sobs.
Because his eyes have been dry
As his brothers have fallen around
And before him
As cities have erupted in boiling flames
As he has been torn from the inside out by the sounds of human suffering
As children have died in his arms
As mothers have cursed his name
As the world has grown black and charred beneath his feet.

He weeps,
Shaking in the arms of God's servant,
The sins of his work
The guilt of his rifle
Burning in his chest
Hotter than the biting bullet.

The words of the priest
Are drowned
By the malicious hum of aircraft overhead.

An angel of death
Finds them kneeling on the cobblestones,
The holy man and the soldier,
Folds them into its inescapable and
Unbiased jaws
And turns them the color of
Fire and gunpowder.

We created a world of false accusation
Love soon became only partial remission
You took my freewill, as well as my vision
In return I gave my utmost provision
Of hasty provocation
And less than mindful incision
Into your every thought, and each passing decision
I often sat down, but for once I had risen
Asked, "Why are we crawling on the floors of this prison?"

Could not stand one more night under your supervision
There was no longer room for revise and revision
And life doesn't offer any hefty commission
For complying to someone - always asking permission

Our twisted sheets became more like a distasteful collision
Fingers tense as they ached for division
While nails dug deep with careful precision
Yes, sometimes we held hands
And sometimes we held our tongues
Gone quiet with desperate premonition