POETRY

For what good is life,
If one must kill, In order, To preserve it?
Like lilies of the field, We cut them down, In order to preserve, Their charm.
The folly of believing, That one, Can exist, Without the other.
That one’s breathing in, Can be maintained, In the absence of another, Breathing out.
That breath, Is not, A gift, From God.
Recklessly denying, That in killing our foe, We have chosen death, Rather than life.
That in killing, Those who we hate, We have proven that we, Do not love God.

Oh Sweet Child... Wounded Soul!
Oh sweet child,
Cribbed as a gift from God,
Within the belly,
Of my own bowels.

Blessed piece of flesh,
Sperm and egg made whole,
A magnificent miracle of life.

Nursed from within,
And born out of,
A womb,
To love,
And serve the world.

Yet stolen... even plucked,
As if a seedling,
From the very branch,
Of my own being,
Like sap sucked out,
As marrow from my own bones.

Conscience seared,
Innocence lost,
Manhood morphed,
Into the brute force,
Of a soldier ready,
And willing,
To kill,
Upon command.

Yet,
Upon return, Still a man,
But one with scars,
Hidden deep within,
The troubled spirit,
Of a once blameless child,
Forced to face the reality,
Of a long gone,
And distant war,
Having come home to roost,
Within the now wounded soul,
Of a fallen, Human frame.