Souvenir From A War Past Fought - (12/04/2016)

Memory serves well like it had been yesterday

That dusty battlefield, clutching our guns tightly

We ran in screaming and shouting

Firing left and right, looking out for any more enemies

Daring to cross our paths, this was going to be a great victory

We were sure of victory

A siren wailed and pierced the ears, a cry to get low and keep cover

What little ground to spare, we dove to, amidst the bodies and barbed wire

Watching the enemies take their steps back

Like loose bricks, my comrades and I were scattered as artillery rained

The bombs too, they lifted our ground, sending the corpses along with us

I landed, yet couldn't move in the smoke the billowed from every corner

The screams of men, both young and old would echo in my proximity

Before me stands my closest colleague, as smog and dust begin to settle 

Battered and bruised, bleeding yet still breathing, as he clings to the shrapnel in his side

Pinning him up like a brave, bold statue as he looks down to me

I looked to myself, in my pained struggle to move

My own fate crushed like my legs under the rubble

To the cold night sky, I gazed up in gloom, begging and pleading for an end to the misery

An end to the screams, the burning and agonizing pain, the loss of my comrades

Grown men reduced to tears on that field, much worse than a boy crying after his mother

Taking us up one by one, our all in white saviours arrived, transporting us to a large tent

Pained groans becoming cheers and applauses, I too giving a holler for my answered prayer

Counting their blessings on our road to recovery, a road to survival

Lives were lost by the thousands, yet lives were saved by the hundreds

A hard truth, a harsh reality to war in watching those lives count down so rapidly

The surviving, left only to grasp at what else comes next 

Strength, pride and resilient determination became a detriment to us all

As we were paraded and shown off like vintage toys for all the world to gaze 

Upon our big men in shiny decorated suits of valor, our shells of little broken boys

Their souvenir was my lifelong commitment to a cause, which I understood little

My souvenir is this chair that I will be confined to forever, keeping my immobility at bay

Rolling on now for a loss above ground, until the day I go to sleep beneath it