War Dance

AR-15s frolicking their butts off.
The happy song of the bayonets.
Gates of paradise ground open by grenades.
Claymores bouncing,
bombers headspinning,
bunker busters diving
into the earth. Such joy,
and all because
we’ve allowed them to play,
pushed them into this abandon,

clucking like chaperons standing around
just to be defied,
recalling how we once did this
with our own cave-roughened hands.

“Kids these days,”
we chuckle,
forgetting for the moment
that we made them.

“In our day, we did it
up close and personal,
and we never wiped
blood from our hides
until we were sour
from the smell. 

They don’t know
what they’re missing.”

Tags: poems, poetry, war