A hero of war—
That’s what they called him.
They spent themselves
Trying to find words
To give meaning to his death,
But all was lost and all was
Pointless.

His angular head
Hung in glory
For the things he carried
Were not his own.
The cross he carried
Was his father’s story.
He hung upon the
crossbar of deaths row.
“Mother may I, go on and die?
There is nothing left for me.
Nothing!” He bowed his head—
He died.

“Abba! Abba!
Why have you forsaken me?
Abba! Abba!
Why have you traded glory for my death?
Abba! Abba!
The iron hath rusted
The youth hath faded away.
Here outstretched lay I for a stupid war.
If you must father, drive spikes through my hands
Make them spikes of *** to forget about war
Today I have tasted the good wine,
And today I will die as a holy sign.”

Panic set in as he woke up naked on the table.
He looked down his slender leg
to find a stump of yellow and green projections.
His stump was sewn together like a Christmas ham.
Chloroform callbacks reeled into his mind.
Naked, he felt as though a free man.
Here on this table in the dying days
Lay the last breaths of hope in humanity.

Metal protruded from his skull
He felt the war deep in his mind.
No man’s land hugged Georg
With a frigid sense of endearment.
Wrapped in the tendrils of the night,
What good was his wound now?
He was missing pieces,
Waiting for a missing peace.  
God softly called,
“This is the end”

Round two sounds the bell,
Flesh wounds are new.
It blisters.
**** filled sores.
The wait begins.
“How long will it be?
Perhaps an hour.
Wait! Perhaps—
Perhaps they wouldn't come.
Yes! My way out of it all.
A hero’s escape.
They just couldn't get me in time.
Maybe I’ll die in the wait—
I’d rather die in hope.
Alas, the stretcher of life comes.
**** it.
I live to fight another day.”

Through the haze of dust came
The miraculous love.
Love brought vapors of sweet befores.
“Ahh the smell,” thought he, “This be the
Temptation of youth.” Girls doused in
Thick smell: summer’s scented sand.
T’was not many girls, but one. One who
He loved—He fathomed possible.
Soap and towel, given for the purge.
Dunked in baptismal waters,
But the earth was resilient.
The details are in the fabric.
The fabric is in the details.
Was it his stitching, or the towel’s?
imprinted with a thorny crown.

Georg lay waste to sharp shrapnel pangs.
The hand of Simon reached, gripping
The leatherneck deformity
Off the forsaken war floor.
Spitting slurred speech he raged to Georg
“Take my hand Comrade! Do not wait!
Gas is coming, can not you taste?”
Georg could taste the thicket of dust.
The dust preyed upon him—his youth.
Under cover the two discussed,
The pains of war—the loves they lost.
“I loved my wife” spoke he: Simon.
“I loved my books,” Spoke he: Georg.
“I loved my faith,” Spoke he: Simon.
“Tell me Simon, what good is faith?”
“I know not why—I just hold it.”
“I hold far too much don’t you see?
My father’s will doth burden me.
Besides, what of faith here entrenched?
They let us carry dead men, but
What of faith? I ponder this so.
Should not faith carry us comrade?
Oh how the faith has lost its weight.
Trust me comrade faith will not save.”

Mother may I, take two steps forward?
Mother may I, come to your bedside?
Mother may I, tell you of the torture?
Mother may I, request a sweet lullaby?
Mother may I, plant understanding?
Mother may I, ever cross the sea?
Mother may I, keep on exploring?
Mother may I, drift away from thee?
I may, mother, drift across the bar.
I may, mother, sink beneath the storm.
I may, mother, find God over par.
I may, mother, be whole yet still torn.
I may, mother, be gloried yet pained.
I may, mother, be generationally *****.
I may, mother, be lost and not found.
I may, mother, be within—without.

Georg was an afterthought
Of a short metal round.
Which Pierced him in the ear,
Beside his holy crown.
“What luck,” he thought as the
Blood ran thick.  “Only half
Of this war I will hear—
Only half will exist.”
He stood half in the dark
Hearing only one side
Of the war.  He heard the
Cries of his enemy.
The tongue seemed forlorn,
But the message was one:
Befallen was no country,
No province had been won,
Not a yard would be gained,
For war is deaf, blind, and dumb.