Casualties of War

Time wasted…dreams destroyed

Scorched Earth Diplomacy….burn down everything

Looking back I should have seen it coming…hindsight

Truth be told…. I did

“Oh no, she’s just acting that way because…”

Custom crafted excuses….lies are what they’re called

Can’t let em’ see that I made yet another bad decision…fools in love

Stone face…makes it look good for the cameras

Public relations….or Public humiliation…take your pick

The seed was planted long before I tilled the ground…

She created you in her own image….do as I do…not as I say...

Tore you down from an early age…shattered your psyche

Convinced you that you were worth less than the dirt beneath her feet

Mama’s baby girl…so sweet

Changed your name ever so often…

Bitch….Whore…Slut….Stupid…Useless…

“Don’t you hear me talking to you?!”….she screamed

Entrenched on the front lines of an emotional, psychological, and spiritual Vietnam

Sleeping with the enemy….

“Sit up straight Honey” she says as you relax in the front pew….

Knowing that on this day…the day that the Lord has made…There is a brief ceasefire

But don’t get too comfortable…the day is young…and long

Countless tours of duty before the age of fourteen…

Never made it to Somalia, Afghanistan, or Baghdad….

But you did see action…in the living room

Daily skirmishes turned into lifelong conflicts pitting you against….you

A mental, emotional, and spiritual war within that manifests itself without…

No purple hearts or parades for this campaign…only invisible wounds

Her scars bleed on the inside

Walk light… her surface is fragile…thin ice

Honorably discharged at eighteen…off to college…

“Oh but before you go…there’s something that you should know….”

He’s not who you thought he was…eighteen years later….

“Mama NO!”…as the tears flow

Daddy’s?….maybe not

Mamas a traitor….violated her oath…

Conduct unbecoming an officer….or a mother

She fought through it though…graduated near the top

Beauty and brains…she overcame…or so it seemed

PTSD has lingering effects…laugh now, cry later

She’s Part Two…do as I do….

So here we are twenty years past…and she’s losing

An army of fallen soldiers in her wake…because the battlefield has changed

This is non-conventional warfare…and your strategy is obsolete

Some died in battle, some walked away mangled and scarred for life

Many like myself went AWOL…Battle weary…but tested

Never again…I’ve earned my stripes…

But her…she’s off in search of another war…

No justice, No peace is her motto…payback

Payback for all of those who came before me and refused to be broken…

Kamikaze attacks…blindsided

Better have your vest on because she goes hard…her darts penetrate Teflon

She’s got soldiers in training…innocent minds…have no clue of what’s in store

And the cycle continues….casualties of war…

© Sean M. Macon 2013

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