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*** the points. The point's the poetry. That's all I've got to say.
This poem is for every man and woman that has worn a uniform,
not for politics or a *** flag, but for the person standing next to them.
When I was seventeen, I thought that we were right.
I thought someone used the Necronomicon to speak life into trifold flags and they
said, "The blood is beginning to fade and we need
more to make waves when you salute. I thought there was something honorable in
the caskets that come back from war. Our military has over a million soldiers in
it, but most people are too embarrassed to admit
that they don't know any Or that not everyone who wears a uniform is
a hero. There isn't a pattern of camouflage to disguise
the wrinkles in our hands that never let us forget that
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Is some patriotic way of saying "regret,"
And that a thank you doesn't mean *** when you don't ask us how much we had to hurt ourselves
to come back I'm sorry, but if you haven't been there,
the *** your opinions. They're about as fact-based as Christopher
Columbus discovering America.
You only know what the stories told you. When I was twenty three
I dreamed of the Hoover Dam full of exit wounds gushing.
It is nine years old, its mother calls it Ali, calls me child-killer
and the adjective "suicidal" has never seemed so form-fitting,
but the stories we make up in our mind are the only reality we need.
Instead of blood covering my hands I pretend that I am 8 years old,
picking blackberries in Indianapolis again, the trucks aren't blowing up,
someone did another cannonball into the pool, magazines aren't being filled with bullets,
I'm just putting books in my backpack. My boots are still unlaced because I'm just
tying my tie for the first time, I wasn't saluting.
My mother was checking my forehead for a temperature But the Kevlar is getting in the way,
and I want to keep pretending. I'm tired of people telling me that they'll
pray for me only to pray that we win. Neither side wins in war --
One just loses less, and the person on the other end of the AK
becomes your judge and volcano top deity, spitting fire at its worshipers.
God doesn't exist at the end of rifle scopes like there's some Jesus air freshener we can
hang at the end of guns to make gun smoke smell like flowers blooming
in rifle barrels -- besides, taking a life is the closest to prayer
some of us will ever get. When I was twenty-five,
Someone cut the strings between me and God's Dixie cups
and our voices weren't big enough to reach the other tree,
so the space between became the same circle of hell that he threw Lucifer's wings in,
and you call it "veteran." Don't call us that -- it sounds too broken,
too shaken, beards down to the muzzles at our fingertips,
Legs -- if any -- only good for being stepped over,
and home is a pair of arms still clutching at those
of a rifle in Afghanistan. When I was seventeen, I was strong enough
to pull a trigger. Today I'm a weaker man.