Return....rebirth

Got past "In...Dependence" Day. Actually pretty low key. Bout the only fireworks was my explosion over an editorial in the paper, drawing analogies between the Iraq war, and the American Revolution. Been reading editorials for over 20 years, and never have I responded, nor commented on one. After I cooled down I felt compelled to send off a scathing reply to the "expert" that wrote the editorial. Anger was probably exacerbated by my own repressed issues, but it actually was a bit cathartic. Maybe there is some utility in the concept of transferance, eh?

In the eyes of those I greeted
On return from deserts far
I saw the blankness of emotions repressed
I saw the invisible scars

To speak to them of whence they came
Intonations now suddently hollow
Lifelessly they talk of abject horrors
Of orders they blindly follow

Change the subject they would pray
So that they could live again
Just now returning from the dead
So desparately they long to begin

The transformation before my eyes
From lifeless, tortured souls
To friends, brothers, fathers, sons
Trying to gain control

I could never begin to understand
What it is they struggle to forget
For me, for others, it becomes the task
To allow the fires of their other passions to be lit

Haunted though I now become
To think of living outside one's self
In order to fufill the goal
To survive, to come off the shelf

I dealt alot with the Veteran's of Foreign Wars in this last of my research trials. Related better to the younger crowd, the ones now returning, guardsmen who thought it was simply income supplementation they were on board for.