The call and cost of war

The call to arms in a poorly worded draft,

told, to take not comfort in a rod nor staff,

but only defend the honor of the flag,

and then come home to us in bloody rags.

While they forge justice with double barrels,

hands held, only with grenades in between,

they are thrown, like no caution to the wind. Perils

of the broken trusts, as the bullets careen-

that we are lost now in trenches unknown,

watching as the able bodies are slain and thrown,

we see that Darwin’s promises are voided

in our imagined civility over peace, with both avoided.

The wars that we have crafted in our lives,

is an illusion of what can survive.