Letters come & go.
Messages from home: love lost.
Jefferson Davis
& “Honest” Abe Lincoln’s war…
…nothing more than flexing strength.

The sun rises up
above the barren Culp’s Hill
as Ewell kept them
back, & Jackson’s wishes were
lost on Cemetery Hill.

Gettysburg was filled
with mudpits, puddlepits, shitpits
& every kind of
pit. Not any kind that they
wished to see as guns moved up.

The barrage of shells
from the artillery was
never ending, not
unlike this cursed war, all
while brothers & sons were lost.

The second day came
with no signs of stopping, he
packed his gear, grabbed his
rifle, & marched out to the
sound of Charon’s ferrying.

The medic rushes
out onto the battlefield
hesitating not.
His crude instruments flailing
about in his pack, he works.

Medicine, horror,
they were synonyms to him
as he braced the man;
scraping against flesh, he screamed.
This Civil War--hell on Earth.

Sawing off a leg
was much harder than once thought,
the medic then knew.
In the thick of battle, screams
drowned out screams, & drowned out screams.

Bullets whizzed by him
as he cleaned up his patient.
Or was it victim?
These days it all seemed the same:
North, South, free, slave, dead, living.

What once was blue ‘n gray
was now brown & black & red.
Explosions tore up
the land around him as he
cleared his vision & finished.

Out of the brush, fear
overtook the medic as
a man in blue clashed
with a man in gray; blood ‘n sweat
drenched both as life was on balance.

The medic was stunned
& failed to bring himself to
act at first. He shook
himself awake, & grabbed his
knife, & leapt into the fray.

His knife plunged precise
into the blue man’s heart. No
soldier, but knew his
stuff. The gray man thanked him, &
the South fought another day.

All for naught, for on
that third day, Lee ran with his
tail betwixt his legs
all the way to Virginia.
Two years later, all for naught.

July fourth, eighteen
sixty-three, no cheers, no love,
no wins for us folk.
Only them **** Yanks get their love
from home: letters come & go.

Sherman’s March left him
quaking in his boots; gone was
his love. Gone was his
home. Gone were his letters. All
of it gone. Gone with the wind.