Hot damn, the morning
          shines bright.
Up and at ‘em, boots laced up,
fatigues secured, rifle loaded. You
know what’s coming when you stare into
the mirror. You’re still in the desert,
still fighting a ghost, still waiting
for some assholes’ made-up
bomb to smack you upside the head.
Hot damn, the mourning.


I’m in the mobile castle with
enough machinery, ammunition, and general
badassery to make Napoleon Bonaparte
shit his little white pants. But,
even in the middle of the city, I’m 
in the wilderness, because I’m always
hunted, never hunter. Mother fuc–I’m
trying not to cuss – it’s one of the
few things I
can control.


When I rattle off rounds
one through ten I wake up.
I can kill three people with
ten bullets.
Three insurgents killed.
Three stories ended, 
Just like that: POW, POW, POW.
They’re dead and gone,
No more, but their stories are too.
What made them bad, made them evil?


They’re sons or fathers,
and they have a life that was.
Why should my bullet be their
punctuation mark? I keep firing.
I keep ending stories because that’s
my job, my duty, but never does it
make me sleep sound. I see the blood
splatter time and time again. The looks
on their faces as they breathe their 
last. Deeper, I drive, into the wilderness.


Peace tempts me
asking me to turn stones into loaves.
I dress in fatigues, and clutch a rifle.
I patrol the streets, forgotten
by my country, and only known by my 
children through scribbling on loose paper.
I can move on, but I can’t forget
the bodies, dead, hole-ridden, of my
comrades and my enemy. I can’t seem to answer
just one question: “Who’s the insurgent, me or them?”