Warrior Poetry: Atmospherics
By Rob
Updated: November 1, 2013

By Anonymous RU Fan
Bad news spreads through old platoons
Like echoes bouncing off 50-mile canyons
Heron’s cries across broad lagoons.
Some men live long, unhappy lives
And fade from the memories of everyone.
Others live the short, sweet sorrow
Of passing with young faces fresh
In the closed eyes of their brothers.
They take their last breath full of foreign dust
And live on as those hyperbolic paragons of courage
All sinewy fortitude and good spirits,
Frail humanity hidden except in broken bodies.
All this as a sliver of a generation struggles to part ways
At once puzzled and dourly resigned as their friend is
Cloaked under star-spangled cloth
And dangerless gunfire.
Seven crisp reports,
Three times,
As the warfighters flinch, barely, knowingly
And the startled civilians feebly battle to comprehend
What would drive the young and talented
To this dirt-covered end.
Of course, they never will.
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Torin Rowe
November 1, 2013 at 9:46 pm
One of the most honest and accurate works I have read, as of late. As a combat veteran and amateur poet I must say this speaks volumes. The perceptional distance between those who chose our path with those who simply observe the consequences may never be closed indeed.
Murphy
November 2, 2013 at 2:02 am
Don’t know why that hit hard.
Jessie F
November 2, 2013 at 4:45 am
Incredible.
mark
November 13, 2013 at 12:45 am
This is so on point I feel compelled to say some thing but find my self lacking of any words of measure.
The long war is almost over and with it the bad news from old platoons. Thank you and we’ll done