Battle Scars

I've seen them, hidden beneath sleeves.

I'm sure you have too.

Maybe on someone else's wrists...

Maybe on your own.

The mark of the outsider.

I have seen in the world

1,000 starry eyed dreamers,

Their arms notched and knocked

Like the twisted oak walking cane

Of some wild sherpa of the Himalayas.

Each line holds a story of their journeys.

Each line a broken promise

Or a shattered dream.

I felt the bite and the sting,

And though less intrepid than some,

Their canes an unreadable volume

Of escape and pain,

I have walked the same path.

I dreamed to be the

Kerouac or Ginsberg or Frost

Of my generation,

But knew I would settle

For madness and mediocrity.

Hammering keys before the monumental lens

Into a world of unfeeling code,

A shattered looking glass,

Scratching my words into beaten notebooks

And park benches

And bathroom stalls

And the back of my hand,

Muttering and whispering

These words on street corners,

And in back alleys

And rotted out foreclosures

On dusty roads out of town,

Modern day Hooverville hotels

For those with nothing left to give,

I spewed out my madness

Like the tears from my eyes

The blood from my veins

And vomit from my rumbling drunken guts;

I would settle for mediocrity,

We all would.

He called us the Greatest Generation.

I don't know about all that,

But we came up swinging.

From day one, we knew this was war.

From the sleepless nights,

Taunted by the moon,

Cackling transistor radios and distant gunshots 

Our midnight companions, 

To the nights of defeat, too young to understand,

Locked in the basement,

Face buried in my mother's chest

Bedded down on a mattress of shattered glass,

To the aching, bone deep isolation,

To our lifelong search for a truth

We were never meant to know,

A tale of traitors hearts and a b******s flag.

The stories are different,

But our pain is the same.

I sit here, restless, another sleepless night gone by,

And I know why I write.

I write for them,

The hurt, the outcast, the lost, 

The boys and girls and women and men

Who have walked the path that I have,

Who have scaled the same mountain.

Who wear the same badges.

They are not a mark of shame.

They are not our weakness.

Many of the people these words were meant for 

Didn't make it.

I couldn't save them, we couldn't.

That used to kill me inside.

I needed to save everyone.

Part of growing up is accepting that sometimes you can't,

And sometimes...

They don't want to be.

But we did. We made it.

And we bear the mark of our struggles,

Against ourselves and the world.

We are soldiers of a secret war,

And these are our battle scars.

And so help me god,

I'll never leave a man behind.

Reviews

[Emily B]

for all those with visible scars

and for those with scars that are hidden away

i used to try to save people too, before i realized how impossible that is, i can sit beside them and hold their hand, i can turn all the lights in the house on and play the music so loud that the echoes of the past can't be heard, i can open my heart and just be there

it is good to see words like this here

[RyanXIII]

beautiful