Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Enemy Fire

This feels somewhat apropos, given the fact that President Obama is considering sending yet more troops into Afghanistan. Please, Mr. President, show us you deserve that Nobel Peace Prize. Violence only begets violence...bring the troops home.



Enemy Fire

My life has been a life of the gun,
A life of flying lead and heavy steel,
A life lived on the hair-like line
Dividing life and death.
My parents have pictures of me as a boy
With a loaded pistol in my right hand,
A loaded bottle of milk in my left;
I was quick on the draw with both
And could aim like a pro every time
With a squirt or a bang and a gummy grin.
I got myself a license to kill
Long before a license to drive
(And still to this day I am better by far
With the first of these terrible twins).
I had little interest in clubs or sports
Unless they required ammunition,
And the only games I cared to play
Were games of total bloody war.
I drove to school with a shotgun at my side
More often than I did with a book,
The one worn dull by my studious hands,
The other pristine in a jacket of dust:
For all the things I needed to know
I learned as a student of Professor Steel,
And I was always the teacher’s pet,
The favored disciple every year,
The one with all the bright gold stars
And smiley faces next to my name;
“Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out”
Was my quote in the high-school yearbook.
The Great Outdoors was only ever great
When it gave me a buck to mount on my wall
And a snapshot to show the kids I would have
With a tall tale to tell them once I had retired.
Some called me a killer deep in my genes,
An adrenaline junkie, a wannabe God,
A plague, a pariah, a terror, a scourge,
A demon of Hell—and a brother...
And I would smile and give a wink
With eyes that glinted like steel.

But here, so far away from home,
The shadows cast by dunes and dust
Upon an endless desert’s sands,
Beneath the beating hammer of the sun,
Will take the strangest shapes at times—
The shapes of does, of coons...of men.
I raise my gun and set my sights,
The scope revealing all that hides
Within those shifting shades of sand
Like soldiers watching from trenches.
I aim...but find no target there.
I fire...but only raise a puff of dust.
I fire...but only hear the echo fade.
I dream...but never sleep or seem to wake.
My life is a life of the gun,
A life lived in the crosshairs every day.
They tell me I am a bringer of death,
A killer down to my DNA,
A Storm against Evil, a Terrorist-scourge,
An Agent of God—and a Soldier
Of Steel...though now it feels like rusted tin
With stiffened limbs and joints in need of oil.
But sometimes I peer into the scope
And stare into eyes that shimmer and swim,
The crosshairs fixed on a pupil grown large
And fathomless like an abyss, like a dream...
And I forget that heavy, lifeless feel
Of the trigger dividing life and death
As I forget the side that I am on
When a leaden tear strikes the searing sand.

Image credit: soldiersmediacenter, originally from flickr via Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

fallen star fading

This is another old one, and it feels appropriate for the sudden onslaught of COOOLD.


fallen star fading

A down of grass beneath my body,
Around me ground the dew has wetted,
A darkened firmament above me,
The sunset passed and not regretted:
Now all is still, this world gone silent,
A weary mother lightly sleeping
While somewhere else within a shadow
A something slowly rests from creeping,
Unlike the stars that float so distant
Along that inky stream and glisten
And whisper songs or ancient stories
To those who have the heart to listen.
But here is peace no sign of motion
Of life or breath to set me thinking—
Except the tears like flowing silver,
And cold, so cold, while softly sinking
And dropping down as stinging dewdrops
On to the ground to make it frozen,
To make the earth a slab of marble
To make a bier the bed I’ve chozen.
And still they fall and ever colder
Becomes my bed my bier my senses
As tendons acke and sinews stiffen
And all around a fog drips
And sounds are mixin.g no sense
is there to hear but. coldness
But still I heer the stilness
And hear the feeling of the chill
Is sinking in.
                    Is sinkinginto
                    The sound of snow
                    A snowflake
                    A snowdrop               a skull
Is falling down
          Is drifting down
     is dancing. Down
a snowdrop dancing
down. is silent
   as a Snowflake
drifting falling.
                    a tear
and i heer it above
dancing coldly
and i feel it drifting coldly or i hear
myfeeling
it.
   cold
 as it drifts asitdances asit fals.
a snowflake droping
like a star falling Makeawish asleeep
a cold snowdropflake
star. on the ground frozen sleeps

Image credit: Barasoaindarra, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.