HURT

I wear this crown of thorns

Upon my liar's chair

Full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time

The feelings disappear

You are someone else

I am still right here

What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt
********************************
I didn't expect it to hurt quite so much, this goodbye. Nobody likes goodbyes anyway, but we can anticipate them sometimes and cushion the blow by being ready. Or at least we think we can. I tried to will myself, to steel myself against the pain I knew would come, thinking that might take the sting away. I should know better after all these years that it doesn't work that way. The pain still comes, and oftentimes in different ways than you anticipated. Sometimes it comes in waves, others it stabs and stings. The mind conjures up moments and images that were once "forgotten," now so vivid and omnipresent. How did it end up this way? Where did things come unglued?

I may never know.

No Place for the Timid

---- On the base at Ft Bliss just today he sat down to the flask
and his fist ain't been sober since maybe October of last year.
Given time you can tell he's been down for awhile
But my GOD he's so beautiful
When he smiles, I just want to hold him -----



"There has to be light at the end of this tunnel!!!!!"
we shout.
But we're just as far in as we'll ever be out....





Memorial Day is coming soon.

I remember.

I remember watching you leave
the day the war became personal
I remember the way my blood froze
and the world felt like it was spinning out of control
when I realized I might never see you again
or if I did
you'd be in pieces.

I remember hearing the news.
I remember the chill in my spine
The way my body clenched
I remember I stopped breathing
when I saw you for the first time without your leg.

Remembering...
ALL OF YOU

ALL OF YOU who have passed this way

Who have traveled this road
Who have bled for me, for all of us
Your blood, your sweat, your tears,
Your hearts and souls,
Pouring all of yourselves into the task at hand
Regardless of its hazards

Some of you losing your lives

Surrounded by sand and shrapnel

Leaving your blood smeared across a strange land
Surrounded by your brothers
All so far from where you belong.
Too far from home.

For those of you whom the war followed home
For whom it lives in your very soul
For those of you that combat revisits
Every time you close your eyes
It is then you can see your friends
Your brothers
Taken from this life too soon.
It is they who haunt you
to your very core.

For my friends

near or far

alive or dead

wounded

surviving
getting by
For all of you who've done it
What more do I have that I can offer you
Besides my words, my love and my eternal gratitude?
We will never forget what you've done here.

I promise you I will

NEVER FORGET.

~eileen~

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~Theodore Roosevelt, Sorbonne, Paris - April 23, 1910~