Home but Changed

Father returned from the battlefields
and stares from cold, fiery eyes.
He fought in a war that wasn't his
and found country's demise.

No words of woe escape his lips
as he sits strong in his chair.
His blank eyes hide what's been left behind
as he frowns and is lost in air.

We're at a loss as for what to do,
it kills us day by day
to see him shrivel and see him weep
as he stays alone alway.

We can't reach into his head
and pull out what makes pain.
We try and try to comfort him,
but it's all, alas, in vain.

***

I've seen things great, I've seen things bad,
as the war showed no sign of end.
We shared gnat-filled flour as we slept not an hour
and became mutual, life-long friends.

It killed me in trenches, it killed me out bare
to see bodies strewn across fields.
The friends we'd made, their hope all but frayed
using their seeping limbs as their shields.

The bullets flew fast, the bullets flew close,
they whistled and tickled my ears.
They sliced through the tension as an intervention
as they challenged and tempted our fears.

Sending us home was an anticlimax,
disappointment mingled with outrage.
The war which we'd fought, we had all thought
we'd find it hard to disengage.

***

I shouldn't have sent him and I should have prayed
that he'd come home just the same.
But the shell-shock that he had picked up there
was his glory; his horrid acclaim.

If about nothing else I'm happy that
he staggered home in one piece.
I'd seen and heard of cases when
this caused people's lives to cease.

I try to talk and contact him
but he's in another world.
He doesn't ever come up to bed,
he stays in his chair, unfurled.

I leave a tray of soup in his lap
to see if he will try and eat.
But when I return and it is still cold
it marks my final defeat.

***

I found Mother sprawled on the bed tonight,
a pact of cuts, pills and wine.
She left a note, a hurried scrawl
that explained why she resigned.

***

This may not be a story of love,
typical love of today.
But it is a story of love for war
and one family's dismay.

You witness things; unimagineable,
things that you'd rather forget.
But in your twisted time of turmoil,
you cause people to hurt and regret.

So though you're caught up in what
that boy thinks, or what party shoes to wear,
I hope that you are more learned now
on what comes with fighting fair.