Warrior

Come. Sit.
Let me take off your shoes.
Here, some aloe vera for your sun-kissed skin.
Tell me, what lands have your tired feet walked upon?
What horrors have your hollow eyes seen?


You say they took away your pencil and replaced it with a gun,
that blood is red in Iraq, Darfur and Afghanistan.
You say a woman's raw, red-hot yell
is like a sharp knife plunged into a man's heart,
and a child's dry and exhausted wail


can make a soldier forget his own hunger-
his yearning for home, repentance and redemption.
This is what shame looks like:
a man filled with a fear so thick,
it oppresses and represses.


This is what shame looks like:
a man whose tears and dreams fall as freely as rain.
Could anything be worse than the sight of a grown man wetting himself?
Perhaps the humiliation of seeing
the wizened naked body of one's own mother


You say you want to tear your eyes out of their sockets
for the things they have seen, and
rip your arms off their shoulders for the sins they have committed
But son, even blind men see, dream and remember
and life goes on with or without limbs


Tell me, whose war were you fighting?
Was it democracy you were fighting for,
Out there in Somalia, DRC and Afghanistan?
Can democracy be achieved with enforced anarchy, and
terror be fought with more terror?


Now you are back, yet you feel empty like a dry well,
all torn up, confused
and lacking faith in the power of your humanity
Today, I'll sing to you the song of my youth:
real power is in the pencil lead, not in the lead of the ammunition.


Copyright ©, N.L., 2010