Confessions Not Co-erced.

We Bleed in degrees,

years after the wounded
were x-ed precisely

on casualty of war lists
and the dead were graced

with a patriotic eulogy
followed by a cloud of smoke

rising from twenty-one gun salutes.

Our scars are the

cliff notes of our life,
a jagged trail back to 

our misfortunate happenstance.

in a land that scorned

such uttered nonsense.

Insecure young boys

fresh out of boot,
still feeling the toe,

set out on missions to kill,
milking red from live targets,

souls poisoned with asperity  
counting coup, by X-ing marks

on our rifle buttplates as a whim.

Marks that still haunt

at midnight, in opaque dreams,
where unknown faces rise

 from shallow graves mouthing "Why's?"
Often the pressures of

yesterday's follies vex like raw ulcers,
endlessly rehashing quintessential

events in zoned out stares.

Did we dispatch some form

of justice and law, as ordered,
removing a threat to the entire free world,

or were we simply, modern day Attilla's

with guns, butchering peasants who were
scapegoats for the generals

who cowered countries away?

Will the Judgement of some

distant tomorrow, mark us Godly,
or will we be forever damned

in some hellish war zone,
hunted by demons, impaled

and then set free over and over again,
simply fodder for the devil's bloodlust

run rampant forevermore??

~?