[Newspoetry] our troops!

[DL Emerick]

Soldiers are just people like us,
but in uniforms.

Soldiers are men and women,
All of them have families somewhere,
Some of them even have lovers
And their own families, too,
Back in the US of A,
Just like us.
Only we’re here and they’re not.

Oh, sure, soldiering is a job,
A risky occupation, you might say,
Like being a cop, or a fireman, or a miner,
or any number of other jobs –
if we ignore the hails of bullets
and the roaring of bombs.

The pay is lousy,
The benefits are few –
The hours are irregular,
The results of your labors unclear
And no one really appreciates your work,
But isn’t that true of me and you, too?

A soldier is a representative, you see –
Even though no one elected him or her, 
To be there, instead of us,
Standing and fighting,
Wherever the high commanders say,
Safely in a distance,
far from the fray.

A soldier has bosses,
And obeys them, just like us –
And when they tell a soldier “jump”,
She rises somehow and leaps.

The high commanders move a token on the board.
They color pretty maps
and draw charts stained red-white-blue.
A soldier turns white when as blood runs red,
Out on the thirsty sands,
Where his stilled body lies,
Staring up sightlessly,
at skies so blue.

There may have been questions,
Ones that he wanted to ask –
Like “Why am I dying here?” or
 “What will become of you after me?”

His body comes back home,
But he does not return.
A politician uses the occasion,
To talk, as politicians always do,
When they aren’t partying
Or pretending to be true.

The politician talks, and waves a flag,
and utters his utter nonsense like
“W must win or lose”
Because he can’t think,
Except in black and white,
Nor bear to think on God’s possibility --
Of the likes of me and you,
Or of this body, our soldier,
That he lost in his lost cause.