So hard to understand unless experienced.

Bond with others, from respect to care.

Escape and fight; from a past and for a future,

And from that future as it becomes the past and for that past that has again become the present.

I do what I have to do because others are driven to as well, how can I be left behind,

But why did I ever want to remember this.

Finding purpose by receiving and giving direction,

I am the fringe and the basis

I was taken out and am now being taken out of.

No man should bow,

Was I fighting for that or against it; I have become both of those men.

Prologue to routine, there are too many to remember to count.

I get to play with guns,

But I don’t know if this counts as an accomplishment.

Giving emptiness is not fun,

The more emptiness I give, the deeper I receive my own void,

The more raw I become, the more I see, the bigger I feel.

These comrades are transparent regardless of body or brain,

I know them and they know me and we continue to hold each other together,

Continue to hold on.

We can’t point to where the pain hurts but it can’t be generalized either,

Sometimes I stop and am surprised it is there when I was unaware it never left

It’s a shade of us like we are a section of it—direct, vicarious.

You try to make it better, tell it lighter, depict it worthier,

Dedication of something stripping you of yourself so others are able to be themselves,

And these others you sacrifice for are sometimes so different that it’s not worth measuring;

I fought for those causing me to now fight cynicism and aggravation and disgust,

I come back and I see the petty things, the tiny universes of the ignorant, oblivious to their insignificance.

Some claim to know but they do not understand; but if they know this, is it alright—is it considerable?

They will remain unanswered until they look beyond themselves.

They use certain words over and over, in each incarnation, but eventually I just don’t care, though I know there are no other words to use,

They are temporal, finite rows—a small fraction of the others, all on longer columns of a bigger web

Words are simply the dewdrops on the web’s tendrils,

Illuminating the appeal or idealism or conception to be found in something so much bigger and indifferent.

Even this poem is pointless, still simple romanticism despite its desperate effort to explain.

These terms are dewdrops, not even part of the web, but added later—sometimes in vain and sometimes attempting,

Occasionally truthful, but never true,

One theory in a world of bodies, history books of voices, the identities of tradition, the memories of warriors,

All at arm’s reach.

So hard to understand,

Especially comparatively.

And then when dragged back in, they connect and they work and they fight and they do everything again.

They are sentient souls, they are uninhibited, they are free of the constrains of concealment

In all the ways that matter

 when you’re just trying not to die.