Victim

Fear aflutter within my chest
A gun that’s pinned upon my breast
I raise my hands up in surrender
As they tie my hands up, a prime offender.

I sit within my hollow cell
Locked up within my mental shell;
I wonder how things turned out so wrong.
This is not the place that I belong.

I am a soldier, simple to see
I thought I fought for you and me
I never asked for war to start
But they send me out anyways to do my part
And now I’m sitting in this filthy cell
Waiting and waiting for a different hell
Than the one I’ve seen here in this war;
Blood and steel and so much more.
My king, he sent me on this perilous quest
To place the enemy in our arrest
He told me it was for our country people.
He said it was for the church’s steeple.
I gladly took up his heartfelt request
And proudly wore his golden crest.

He said they were animals;
That's what he evoked with his mandible.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived on the field
To find the monsters I was fighting were men and their shields!
Man, with eyes and mouths and ears like us
And then I wondered what was the fuss;
Why we must fight, man to man,
What the agenda must be; I don’t understand.
This war that we started; What is it’s design?
And why was I fighting; Who committed what crime?
Who gave cause for me to kill
When it’s plain to see that it was neither’s will?
We soldiers, we never asked for this right;
So if our rulers want a war, why should we have to fight?
Their choices, our work;
We’re the ones with our nose in the dirt!

My captors awaken me in the night
And whisper to me, “Come here, knight.”
I oblige and come and they lead me out
They take me through the jail route
And lead me outside where I hear many shouts
And I knew inside without a doubt;
That I was to die, a murderous offender
When I thought I was a chivalrous defender.

They set my head upon the wood
And raise their ax as high as they could,
And as it came down, I thought to myself
Why did I fight for someone else?
Why did I rush so blindly in
Without a thought of my own skin?
Why did they send me out to battle?
Why am I being slaughtered like cattle?
Why did my king send me to my death?
Why am I breathing my very last breath?

What did I do with life so far?
Why did I fight for someone else’s war?
I die a soldier, but in my essence I’m just a man
And now I will die for another man’s plan.