Where have all the young guns gone?
Gone to VA lines, everyone.
When will we ever learn?

He has parted with youth in a narrow,
back alley ambush. He has become old
in war. The questions that leapt from his lips
before war lodged on his face are not resolved
by the living, but by the dying.

After the fire fight,
beneath the blown out carcass of a troop transporter,
he held in his arms a lifeless body,
the brother to whom he once told his dreams.

The explosions are no longer external, but internal.
War kills the innocent and innocence.
The dying of one kills the other. He holds a vigil
to reclaim what was lost in war. But the righteousness
he seeks lives only in his country’s call to war
written by merchants, whose currency is arms
and legs and torsos.