You brought that war back home with you
The pain still hiding within your wounds
A blood-soaked sponge inside your skull
Your brain still reeling from horrors untold
A dark stowaway lurking within
And now that war is in your home
The bullets leak out of your hands and mouth
The blood sprays on your wife and kids
A dark red stain on your bedroom floor
And your bloodied eyes hiding it all
Your children cry but you just hear
The screaming echoes of wounded friends
Your memories have you under siege so
The hatch stays closed and the armour strapped
And you bury your pain in your heart
You went out there to save more lives
But you’re forgetting to save yourself
Your armour needs removing now
You need to open the hatch and see
All those fires inside of your wounds
Let someone help you clean your wounds
And wring that blood from inside your brain
And guide your pain from out your heart
Then you can finally come back home
Without getting fresh blood on the rug
After reading Jack Urwin’s book “Man Up: Surviving Modern Masculinity”, I found a load of words rising in my head when reading the sections on how many men come back from military service, and can’t bring themselves to open up about their PTSD.
My first draft was open-form, but I found a sort of 7/4 rhythm developing in some of the lines, so started wrapping it all up in this off-kilter, kind of stressful rhythmic uniform.
The last line of each stanza is in 4/4, which breaks from the uniform, and releases the tension built up before it.
Ludiotic 