"No guts
no glory
no balls,
whatever you want to call it..."
I know why
I am still here
instead of fighting overseas.
That my mind ceases. That I see
what is not real and that
what is not real is reel to me.
That photographs and memories
dance new behind my eyes and
the demons of the night
walk clear in daylight.
That I cannot be trusted,
weapon in hand,
to point the muzzle at the understood
enemy.
That, historically, this country
has not been kind to me
or my kind and "only time will tell"
is a piss collection of words
in terms of the granted.
That self destruction is
at its best a course without,
like a shaped charge, and
the votive course of flame and smoke
is at it's end a simple promise
from a pathological
dreamer.
That heaven sent directives
are as useful as a shoe
to the foot of a man without a soul
and the concept
in a universe so large
as ours
that one ant should defeat another
is valuable, is foreign
to me.
That I failed metrics
beyond physical requirements and
that there are minds more capable
than my own, more adept,
at the art of slaying
reduced to machine efficiency.
That I have been rejected
for a lack of mental capability,
though my soul bleeds only for
faith
in the cleansing power of
violent retribution.
That I have guts,
more guts in my frame than
twenty men built the same.
That I can tolerate pain,
more pain than twenty
child full women
and built the same.
That my motives are not
vain glorious and still able
to turn twenty purple hearts
had I the limbs to take away.
I know why I am still here.
A stratification of stupidity.
An eye on "there is you,
but first there is me."
A hedging. A thoroughly computed
hedging. Because I am worth more
dead than alive
in terms of protected investments.
I am worth more here than there
in terms of keeping an eye on
the internally defined margins.
Because I am worth more,
more valuable breathing and
seething, contained, controlled,
leashed to a yard post and always
within arms reach,
I am not there
doing what I have been,
without asking and perhaps
without intent,
groomed to do.
