A soldier's poem

A Soldier’s Poem

Remembering

Soul, soaked in scream,

I never sang.

I unknew loving.

I killed a yellow man,

(Pounding him with the first, the second,

The thousandth bullet of our rage.)

Part me was in his shroud of dead flesh.

Memory (now)

Is not the calendar of the evening news.

It is the every breathing act.

Healing

My child knows me only as seed.

And what can I share in stories

Told in blood, scattered flesh,

And all the things I came to do

At the edge of duty.

Look at me

Wearing shame and rage

And all the other medals

Of the rituals of that code.

So I give out my pain

Not dilution, not sacrament.

Reconciliation to the always-will-be-ness of it.

Acceptance is a solitary, daylight act.

And so I end-begin.