Casualties of War

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life

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…
….Whore…Slut….Stupid…Useless…
“Don’t you her 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This is non-conventional warfare…and your strategy is obsolete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