The world outside is full of light,
there is no fear, no hate, no night,
love and life are free to all,
no one can hear the darkness call,

The world outside is colder now,
I feel the fear, the hateful row,
love is scarce, so very rare,
I hear the darkness, feel it's snare,

The world outside grows darker still,
I'm losing hope, I’ve no free will,
the darkness grows ever stronger,
I wonder if I’ll last much longer,

The world outside is black and cold,
my very soul feels weak and old,
I gaze into the shadowed lake,
my eyes, my hands, seem somehow fake,

The world outside has but one light,
one tiny glimmer through the blight,
a fire burning deep within,
I feel it's warmth throughout my skin,

The world outside is brighter now,
I see it glow, I hear it's vow,
I hear no darkness, feel no fear,
in happiness I shed a tear,

The world outside is full of light,
there is no fear, nor endless night,
my heart and soul feel full of life,
for now, you see, you are my wife.

i lost everything and that’s when the war came
then they reinstated the draft and began mobilizing
with the hope of defeating tyranny once again
and preserving our freedom and securing our resources

a few years before the war i was in a tense mood
privileged to attend university and expand my mind into proto-intellectualism
reading Shakespeare and studying Postcolonial Literature and non-fiction writing
while stacking up a mountain of student loan debt and watching things unravel

i started smoking bales of **** with my medical marijuana prescription
and stuttered through a false start and a series of stalls
watching my life fall apart but enjoying the rollercoaster ride
and falling in love again with the night time like in my teenage years

the television started showing explosion after explosion on city streets
there were also talks about the weather changing wildly and some people were on edge
but then when the war came everything sort of became more focused yet fatalistic

i never thought i’d get drafted but when the Selective Service notice arrived i wasn’t going to fight it
i enlisted in the Navy the following week and once I stepped on that bus everything just sort of became automatic
as i was swallowed into the machine and molded into a soldier

the process of soldierization is a fascinating phenomenon
a desperate or controlling government picks through it’s citizens
finding those most suitable for combating its perceived enemies
and reprograms select individuals to become a part of the killing machine

i don’t know how they picked me
i figured i would’ve been viewed as a loose cannon
and been thrown into a file for the shredder
but despite my liberal dissident undertones i was dropped into the US armed forces

i was stationed on a missile cruiser for the first three years of the war against the Islamic State
i thought it would just be a lot of sitting around in my underwear
launching cruise missiles *****-nilly and having **** ***
but it was so much better than that

i was lucky to not be stationed in the Pacific when things really started heating up
but instead got to sit around in the Mediterranean sun
smoking Turkish cigarettes in the shade of the missile array
stoking the fires and setting the Middle East aflame

on the day Russia launched into the Baltic states i was on leave in Athens
it was still somewhat of a surprise although everyone was anticipating the change
i was summoned back aboard my ship the next day and converged like a phalanx
we waited off the coast of Troy then continued through the Bosporus

we fired a lot more missiles before they finally got a Mig through to sink us
put a nice little dent in the hull and we jumped off into the cool waters of the Black
we didn’t see any of our ships or helicopters after that
but we were near the coast and managed to get to land a few days after the emergency ration ran out


**originally posted on my blog at https://sublimeobscenities.wordpress.com/ on January 23, 2015

Silence
Squeezes my heart
Leaving tracks
Running down my cheeks