"The Things They Carried"

They carried many things

These men, of bullets, and beasts

These men with their loves and hates and unhallowed hands

They carried their sicknesses and heartaches across the land

From forests to everlasting crags

Dreams sought residence in their eyes and hearts

Dreams of deaths untold

Of fire and scream and bullet holes

Their dreams were of the most sickening kind

For they dreamt of love and death in cycle of logic and lust

And unsteady trust

These men

They carried the world

They carried the things they lost

 the things they did not want

And the things in they held most dear

Good riddance!

They wished to scream

To these things

These burdens

And even their lives

For what lives were they to live on their wretched march

The lives of men who burned

Who wrecked

Who payed not attention to what they should

Who let the bullet reach its aim?

The doctor carried his drugs of medicine and recreation

Smoke in his eyes and mouth

In this head and heart

Who wishes a doctor's touch

When he shakes?

The Lieutenant carried his love

A twisted and deathly thing for a woman

with haunted eyes

His love

It killed

And his love he turned to ash

The tall man, strapping and strong

He carried a gun

A gun as large as he was broad

A gun with bullets wrapped around him like vines across their chosen tree

Bullets each with the name of the ones they would kill

A mighty burden for a man

But men are men

Men fight

They are warriors

They are steel

They are Might

They fight in wars and joke on the march

They do not cower from their duty

To country

To home

Until they do 

Another man

One like all the rest

He carried the same

He carried gum and knives

Compass and insidious thoughts

He carried the memories of death

Of a man dead

 felled and fallen like cement

Like bags of rock and sand and flour from a height

This man he talked and talked

About the man who fell

The man whom the lieutenant's love shot

In the head

He talked and talked

Until his fellows told him so

Quiet you!

They yelled

They told this man

For he talked like a coward

Like those with the blush of shame

Of a man, un-enlisted

Together these men carried their loads

Yet separate did they deal

And remiss

And cry

Separate did they morn

And shake

And tremble

These men

Men who carried

They marched

And walked

And forged ahead

And they shouldered their burden

In mind, and body

They marched

They marched

To go home

Or to the devils seductive embrace

In shame or honor

Will they march

With bloody hand

Or broken hearts

In shame or honor?

Now who is to decide

Who is to blame

But themselves?

(Inspired by the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien)