There is no final solution for wretched man,
only a quest for good fellows to defy them.

I am a revolutionary of true colors
carrying the weight of the world
in my immigrant red, white, and blue hands.
Always puckering for a kiss of democracy
I lay back and fall easily in love
with my terrain.
I know
no war is an easy war,
but I am aware that within its frenzy of gloom
it reanimates the speechless.
War,
a place where madness in the eye of a flower seems normal
and at the end of the stain of the day
the beauty of being is forever gone
to a place where whimpering,
willowy men and women are crushed
by dangerous things
in the crosscurrents of the air--then crucified.
How can we ignore misery
and deepen the darkness
by laying back like reclining nudes
with faraway eyes? No grace. No grit. No honor.

For me it is not so simple.
My eyes, like distant beacons,
shield the will-less on their borders.
As the gray gulf pulls us close to them
we stand as one
waist-deep in lumps of earth
wielding our orange tambourines--
I pray that the goal of glory
becomes as visible and as dominant
as the force of prairie lightning.

I am a soldier, your sweet protector
(where old terrors mingle) creeping on until their
undoing.
Sign of life,
as I carry the world piece by piece.

Comment on this poem at Patriotic Thoughts ... including its title and author's name