Sorrow dries the heart like an old leather wineskin,
each new insult as a year in the burning sun,
until it is creased and faded
and stiffly creaks to pump...
I do not resent the dead their dying,
for I too, understand the wanderlust,
the strength of ideals,
the thirst for adventure,
the need and search for meaning...
and I know well that these are not had in life lived without risk.
Nothing worthwhile was 'er gained ill-begottenly or without a price.
So I cannot begrudge the dead for the choices they made and the risks they took,
for these are comprehensible.
No, to the contrary, as the list grows of the maimed and scarred,
as lives well-lived are snuffed as candles in a drafty room,
as familiar names, young and vibrant are etched into stone,
I find I resent the living and their apathy,
their blind obedience and their ignorance...
Moreover, I resent them for their frantic headlong pursuit
towards selfish inconsequence
and this ever-present demand that I care.
If you are not building a better corner of the world,
if you are not in opposition to the forces that coerce your courage and neuter your voice,
if you accept with gratitude your allotted portion,
if you fail to aspire,
give no thought to suffering endured on your behalf,
nor use what you have been given,
then look not here for sympathy,
for I have wept enough for the worthy dead
and those broken for their beliefs,
defined by what they were willing to risk.
Against this measure, what dare you offer?
No tears for the cowards or the lazy,
nor the complainers, the excusers,
the mouthpieces, the sycophants, the visionless,
who value the noise and pomp,
who know nothing of risk or sacrifice,
whose dust deserves forgetting as quickly as their empty words and hollow existence.
You squander opportunity purchased for you in blood,
you elect as you have been trained, like dogs, for either team
the same bastard parasites who have ruined you for half a century
and then, in the worst of audacities, you dare to blame away the consequence.
No cries for accountability, no justice for the guilty,
The mantle of responsibility lies unshouldered
Rusting from lack of use.
It is unpalatable.
You protest with sarcasm or misguided simplicity,
conflicts you once supported.
Or support them for the same reasons.
Petulant children in the bodies of men.
You risk nothing more than words, if that,
while uninformed decisions and laziness drain coffers at home and young arteries abroad,
All spilled for what?
I do not ask rhetorically.
I demand an answer.
Tend to your flashing lights and noise-distracted dying.
I shall tend to the darkness and the silence and the ache of living onwards
while the brave lie still,
cut short and pale,
boxed in shadows
in the abyss of your own being
that you are too afraid to gaze upon
lest Truth echo there upon you.
From what dark pool does this anger bubble and stream?
From the well you yourself let run dry long ago
in the quiet place you cannot go
for you no longer know the way.
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