July 8, 2009

Valentines Day

Valentines Day

With these compressed sugars
in my hand, I have to ask,
“What kind of love story?”

What kind of times are these
that to speak of candy
hearts is wrong because
it implies silence
about so much else?
Every day a man dies.
He could have been me, and
I, should I feel guilty
at not signing the papers
that would have put me in
his stead, and it be me
wandering in the hot
climes of a foreign land?

Where is my love now, in
this hot city built on sand?
She writes letters telling,
“We will be together,
someday, after this farce
draws to its ultimate
end.” Yet I still wonder
what to make of love now.
It among the trees,
the poplars and walnuts,
reminding me of home.
Absent is the love I
left in my verdant hills.
And when I die in this
desert place, what orator
will stand back and say,
“Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori? “

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