Blood free

I watched
cowboys
ride into
the valley
of death
on skeleton
horses in
a sandstorm

and I watched
the sky filled
with airplanes
and bombs
like bloated
tics filling
themselves with
the blood
of our children

I have watched
vampires turn
healers into
killers in the
Fort Jackson heat

I have watched
good men
pull the wagons
into a circle
just to hate
everyone who
doesn’t look
like them

I have watched
my innocence
spill across
the floor
like a drunk
who can’t
hit the toilet

I have watched
a thousand
year war
go on for
one thousand
and ten years

and through
it all it
only took
an extra
American dollar
at the haji
laundry

to make sure
all your
uniforms
came back
blood free.

Talking

I was
talking
to a guy
who was
in the hospital
room of
a good
friend as
he died
he sobbed
as he told
me the story

I tell
him even
after Afghanistan
I still don’t
know how
many deaths
you need
to see
to be
completely
numbed to it
it is probably
different
for everyone

I was 45
that year
at Bastion
hospital and
maybe it
was harder
for me
at that age

young kids
see the world
in black
and white
see it
as us
and them
enemy and
ally they
don’t understand

That is
all us
that everyone
is us
and the
only them
is death

the only
them is
death.

Who

Owns the
catbird seat
the last
rays of
the sunset
the bones
of a city

who sings
a drunken
blues at
midnight
a hymn
in the choir
at the
unemployment office

who writes
the dear
John letter
for America
and the 
suicide
note for
the rest
of us 

who holds
the church key 
the mortgage
on the family
farm the
locker combination 
of our hopes
and dreams
who is
willing to
be in charge

as we 
watch everything
just fucking burn

Matt Borczon is a poet, a nurse, a retired Navy sailor a father and a martial arts master who has written 19 books of poetry and prose. He is taught in a college poetry textbook used widely across the country. Matt publishes often in the small press and has been nominated for the pushcart and best of the net. He has too many hobbies but claimed he can run indefinitely on no sleep