Soldier boy, waving your guns and your weapons
across a filthy field, playing with bullets and
slingshots and water pistols and peashooters and
your chubby hand flinging a glob of strained carrots
over the edge to splatter like shrapnel
across the kitchen floor.
Soldier boy, coming home from battle and wanting
to bury your greasy and soot-stained hands
in my hair, coating it with the scum and spoils of
war and taking the sunshine from my hair the same way
your bombs steal the sun from the sky.
Soldier boy, proving your manhood by washing your
hands in the blood that streams across the field and using
your war as a metaphor for the anger you can't
describe and the anger you can't control and the anger
you can't live without.
Fuck you, Soldier boy, fuck you and
the causes you stand for, your banners that try
to divide the world into simple black and
white and your banners that justify killing and wiping
out the sun from the sky and your banners
that forget the countless shades of gray that you
and all the other Soldier boys die for.