His War Alone

His War Alone

 

The war shows on his face, pulsing through his veins.

He lived among it, witnessed the death of the innocent, the death of people he never knew.

He felt their pain, saw their last breaths of air whispered past their ice blue lips.

He knows nothing but the war, the days of dark clouds and smoke filled skies, followed by screams of terror and death.

In the darkness of his sheltered eyes he can still see the view of distorted hills and lakes.

Red water thick with blood and bodies, buildings alight with flames.

Their voices echo in his ears, their pleading and begging for life to last, for their children’s lives, for their own.

Nights filled with restlessness, the shadow of slaughter lays heavily above his bed.

Not dreams but memories fill his sleep, fear that awakes him in sweat, his body trembling, there is no escape.

Every door that slams, every yell from a child reminds him of war, of guns, of rape.

He tries so desperately to remember himself before war took his soul, but child hood games and family gatherings slip away into the darkness.

They are replaced by his grief, his regret, his denial, his absolute hatred for what war is, for what war has done.

His knows now what he should have known many years ago, that taking a life scars you, breaks you.

To see what he has seen, to witness the dark side of man, it leaves you fighting alone, always alone.

The war has been won, regardless of lives lost, mothers without sons, a whole country that has been washed over.

He came home knowing that he survived, wondering why he survived when all of the youth died with their guns in their hands.

Another war for history books, another nation that has been defiled, defeated, demolished.

Life goes back to normal now.

Civilizations echoing itself with pointless conversation, the weight of the world moves swiftly as children play in the streets, as a t.v. hums gently in the back ground.

Yet he pulls and screams, and begs from within for sanity, for a sense of normality.

Always fearful of gods eyes, of what is to come when death consumes him, the terror that awaits.

He finds no comfort in the touch of a woman, in the taste of a well cooked meal.

It is a life of emptiness that surrounds him now, a dark hole of hatred, bleeding deep within.

It is the end, he thinks, the end of a normal life.

I am built only for war, to take without giving in return.

He understands that he must fight now.

Fight alone.

Not with guns, but within himself.

Over what he has done

Over all he knows

Always fighting

Always alone

 

Reviews

[Michael Kerr]

wow what a great poem, the way it was wrote, the detail, it was just great.
-mike-