"What war did you serve in," she gently asked
after I read Owen's Mental Cases.
Upon that lighted stage my voice had cracked.
I nearly cried before that crowd of strangers' faces.
What fireline have I ever held and bled,
defying death beneath some withering attack?
What murders move me so, what blood's been shed?
Wherefore all these tears, why sense I thus?
this trembling, my raging head's quick twitching.
Owen wrote of death -- its mockery of life;
before War's hungry face -- the waiting,
the vacant stare and nostrils heated flaring;
the breakdown of the mind from warfare's strife;
and more, he carved a human face the stone of anguish.
How was I then to answer and make sense?
To bare such pain which has no cause made plain
makes of all my ranting, utter nonsense.

I might have said 'the Psycho-Crime-On-Drugs-War,'
where the witness wanders homeless, hopeless, reeling,
mental cases made by men unfeeling;
where each citizen's a hostage, meat for killing;
and accidents like cancer clusters
gather and embitter, in the paper;
where freedom, right and reason we reject,
and our victorious parades
are but Pavlovian charades
thrown to dogs, too stupid to object.
It is madness.

I weep for others pain;

I write to scrape the subtle stares of strangers
off my flesh, onto a page where they remain --

a mocking stain reviled.