Chickamauga, April 5

I would have called out to you
but I knew your heart could not hear
and would not permit you an answer if it did.

So I walked on through fields of dead soldiers,
alone, touching stone monuments if only to convince
myself that my own cold stone heart is not the only one.

My mind enclosed the enemy within, who
told me to wave the white flag and let you shoot.
I must have forgotten you already had,

That I am among the walking dead
whose voices have been muted by the noose
of blame, hung so easily around the necks of those

Who love because love is true and not only
when their love is returned in kind. Dis-figured,
I staggered on toward freedom, far horizon of hope.

In the distance, beyond the row of canons pointed
at me, I saw the first pale buds of spring and grass, green
as my love for you in this country of pain, only home I know.

 
(… turns out a synonym for confederate is a colleague. Interesting)

Confederate Dead

I am just
a confederate,
dead to you
and to those once who
counted me
danger to their way,
immoral
even, and hell-bent
on fighting
for right to decide.

I stood there
on the side of love
and you fired,
blasting away dreams,
and then turned
west, washing your hands
on the way.
Won’t you turn to see
trail of red,
confederate blue?


Prisoner of War

War takes more prisoners than those captured
and contained by the enemy, paraded as human trophies.
Life does much the same.


At the Battlefield

At the battlefield: a show of weaponry, guns housed in glass cases juxtaposed with quotes and vignettes from the war-weary soldiers whose haunting eyes peer out in high-contrast black and white and whose ghosts roam wide fields that spring to life, blooming now with color.

In my battered heart: a silent rage, force which with a single turn of a key might be unleashed on nobody in particular but the whole world in general that walks by without recognition of my need. In my imagination I toss the key as I must again and again and again and again. But still there is a throbbing mass of pain that is my own tangled web of life seeking an end to the war.