Dark, dangerous, and a piercing veil of shadows.

All of this has forced me to conceal and face the widows.

I hear their soft sobs and hoarse wails.

I smell their cheap perfume and feel the dusty gales.

Their eyes, deep and dark from lack of sleep,

Contain stories that stab me deep.

A hush falls in front of me.

I see a man, tall and pale, like me.

I did not know how to speak,

for this man was rotted and weak

His eyes told me a story so old,

that I could remember it from the first told.

A man stands, his feet caked in mud,

his eyes desperately shielding from the sun.

I could not make out the uniform he wore,

but his body language told me he was sore.

This, I do recall, shocked me most of all,

when the whistling news came and silenced sound and all.

I could not snap myself from this image of him,

nor could I shake the faces of his common men.

It was a war that we had sought,

and it was a war that many had fought.

see their fat faces, sitting and writhing,

only for themselves and the people’s opinion, waning.

Those men in their fancy suits, shining

Do not even care about the men dying.

The widows crying and the brave men dying,

led me to hear the voices chiding,

“Do not let us be lost in vain!”

But what I can I do to ease the pain?

If I had the power to change the way,

I would push to help them stay

With their families instead of fly to war.

I would stop the fighting and make amends

For all the suffering that we, as a nation, have caused them.

I would take the pain of a soldier’s weight

And put it back in that chamber, away.

They are the protectors of our nation,

But we should treat them as heroes,

Not as people we bury in troughs