The War That Waits

[fluorescent.43]

Went to war with freedom
fizzing hot on my lips, bright and
blue like Afghanistan clouds

My legs itch to move
but there's nothing to do except
look at pale orange desert

(Watch it drain away
into machine-gun clicks)

I see no dead people. Nightmares
don't haunt my bed; neither do dreams.
I don't get to see a war-torn
village of laughing children sink
into graying sand

But thoughts of legless, mindless
veterans returning to a freezer-cold
homeland of rusted pennies and drugged streets
penetrate my flesh

I won't be one of them.
My child's smile decorates my eyes
My wife's scent permeates my skin
Our white picket-fence home sits in my head,
an apple tree just out of reach

-As if I could ever keep
the American dream alive
here in this hot land of green mountains
and fractured sand and crying children
and metal dryer than bone

Behind bulletproof windows,
I have too much time to think.