Computer driven futuristic hydraulic legs
Replace the ones he lost in the sand
They shorten him of his birth given height of 6’1”
He doesn’t stand as tall these days

Bolts of skin like fabric
Cut one square at a time
To patch this young man’s broken and shredded body
Scar tissue, mapped on his arms, his legs
Cut through like streams and roads on once unchartered land
Shrapnel still visibly lodged in his flesh, and invisibly in his heart

Though we are one nation under God
Mother Freedom insidiously removed God’s inherent value for human life
One tactical training exercising at a time
With liberty and justice for all?

A boy is now dead from this young man’s bullet
Girl’s dresses and memories now indelibly inked with his blood
“Why” is all they asked as they cried while pouring out of the bullet riddled car
Their tears fall into the silent muted sand in vain
No one will know this dead boy’s name
His mind is now involuntarily stuck in that moment
In the eyes of that nameless boy
He will hear the girls cry “why” for an eternity…
Did combat training prepare him for that?

As he spoke, I saw his imprisoned tears trying to escape
As I asked the hard questions about his experience
His young face contorted with painful, shameful memories
Camouflaged with outrageous statements of bloody thirst
He might actually have to face the truth now that what was fed intravenously
Into his mind was a poison he ignorantly absorbed…
Intoxicating his judgment, making it patriotic to pull the trigger

At night he sees the dead young boy’s face in the heavens and stars he delivered him to
The boy forgives what he can not forgive himself
He says desperately “I want to go back to kill a few more”
More perhaps so that it seems normal and OK
He wants to rejoin his brothers in the sand box
Where snuffing god’s breath from another human being’s soul
Is just another day’s pay.

Young man who I will always remember as only 7 years old
Now an involuntary sage within his war scared tortured body and soul
He keeps it to himself he says…
He fights to stop the war still within himself
And around every corner and behind the inevitable darkness waiting behind
The light that closes around the safety of the sun
Daylight is the only place to hide in such a dark place when there’s no where to run
Especially with those new legs

-jrc

(About my friend and what he experienced in Iraq as a Marine Srgt/Special Ops. In the end, he lost both his legs when his humve ran over a land mine during a mission. He is lucky to be alive and has come a very long ways. It all just breaks my heart, what he is left to deal with now, but he is kickin recovery ass and walking on his new legs in record time!)