A young Afghan face look curiously at my Special Forces patch
in pale-eyed wonder
as I take a brief respite from my trials;
I notice warily, then turn
and catch a shiny yellow substance from a glossy plant
mimicking unit markings on the natural bony armor
of a clumsy, round-bodied insect
with paper-thin wings humming a strained, vibrant noise,
still full of life;
I allow myself to indulge in my practiced military mind
as view the bug as a heavy weapon of war-
slap, bang, teeter, burst, clang, rattle, jar,
crash, burn...
Aiding me in my efforts to brush this conflict aside
are my alliances of feuding, bickering militants-
pugnacious and quarrelsome,
a blend of inflammable petty claims
kindling ineffectual disorder
among the illicit poppies and wailing mountain goats
who run from the swinging sticks
bleating in a primeval chorus
of uncomprehending instinct,
not unlike their blister-soled masters;
I am to force an intelligent cooperation
to aid in the plight of the local clans
whose women and children have grass
protruding from their starving lips;
the foreigners who endeavor to bring aid
being decimated before they arrive
by the roaming warlord footmen;
and here, from the confines of their conflicts and struggles
I can only wonder
if anyone in the world is looking on…
Another day, another night,
and I am blessed to wake and rise again,
if only to cold morning
with an icy brightness beyond that allotted to me;
the frosty brittleness of my stubble melts slowly away
in the steam of my Meal-Ready-to-Eat
and the coffee that I distractedly warm with my flameless heater
that I alternately use to battle camel spiders and scorpions
while the greater world fights on
for a more sublime and lasting peace...
I wonder, as I resume my journey,
about the tumult of inventive discord
that originated from local, divisive factions
and their devised fabrications...
Though mobile,
I fit snugly into the cohesion
of the illogical entanglements of the inhabitants
who I encounter along the way;
I share my insights, comforting, yet conforming
to the unintelligible confusions
that I organize into a harmonious coldness that transmutates-
now passionless, now spiritless, now violent and threatening,
deadly, with shivering accessories
from the smoking, deadened failures
of the inflexible foreign assemblages
of colossal pretenses
that render my contentious emotions comatose,
that turn the fight into a dull expressionless struggle
composed of an amalgamation
of small, consumable beauties and comforts
found in the rubble, soothing and agreeable,
welcome yet desolate, and cheerless;
with a fanciful appearance of courtesy
intermingled with the fear;
The dead are celebrated and eulogized in posthumous praise
by long-bearded leaders and bent, gray chieftains
whose facades of government
are sufficient to satisfy the civil onlookers
for their largesse of aid and charity.
As I ponder this antagonistic contest
I am able to sufficiently expose
such false emulations of concern,
much to the satisfaction of the participants,
in a polite converse of complex compliance
worthy of compliment;
there is a reluctant tolerance for the supernatural,
acknowledging but refraining
from compromising the irresistible impulse
to violate their serene moments
by acting upon the subject with unwise derision or ridicule.
So I wonder
as I scale the impossible mountains, the rugged mountains
lying between me and my uncertain end,
if, amidst their own myriad, microscopic, and distant
conflicts and struggles
if anyone is really looking on in wonder...
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