Private Pyle’s Pain
You think soap bars in a towel
hurt? Physical pain is fleeting—
and scars on skin heal quicker
than a soul broken by a band
of brothers, with darkened hearts,
trained to adapt and endure, born again
harder than anything you ever
imagined, back in a home town
where guns killed only for food,
when you could eat when hungry
and sleep soundly, safely; unable to
imagine monsters under your bunk
bearing arms against you, disrupting
dreams where baby-faced boys despair
about all the things we have to destroy
inside ourselves, in order to survive.
Me Three
I know how bad it is
because I know how bad I was.
And I wasn’t even trying to injure or offend.
But, like so many before me, I was a human
hard-on—all aggressive hands and unsubtle tongue,
insecurities abounding and desires that were needs
which, for men, approximate emergencies.
We know nothing else except what we crave,
so we invade tiny towns and leave burnt buildings,
broken glass, and blood in our barbaric wake.
Subsequently, we send flowers—or tell secrets
that, translated, sound something like concession.
—
***
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