To War, From Youth

oh youth in all its callow shades is from our hope, precisely made yet giv'n to stain the bib of war a bleed each mother answers for. the wheels turned ... while the best of our heartland those blessed progeny of our founding fathers and the wise women that bore them to breath and coursing bled for the careful contracts of rights, human and their constitutional foundations others sweated away their brows and bones in preparation of the pine catafalques that would bear those dear conscripts home in valorous yet vain-and-vapid victory the wheels turned, indeed progress, capitalism and industrial might gears enmeshed and spinning, true greased by the sinews of our dearest treasures - selfless young women and men who felt it their duty to give limb and life to those very ideals ... and ideas ... oh youth conveyed to sterile soil the mute impasse for terror's toil discarded 'midst that chaos' fold a winter's kiss, commended cold. word wielders ... 'sentence-smiths' in varied masks pressed quill to paper with their barest cunning and acuity painting the horror ... pictures of phrase to capture the ruin ravages, barren and bleak strife and stares and stabs and stench, raw meant to send home that terrible truth their best efforts to plead for our best boys to keep the bond presses chugging rhythmic mimeographs in endless streams devil's pay for a collective guilt mortar for mangled limbs and lives - weep lost to rain ... crosses blooming like May meadows their roots swollen, sucking the blood-soaked sod water, far too precious ... but the letting of young veins, in constant supply ... oh youth once gone to blithe pursuits now tasked to graves in bloody boots what rights, this war, to waste a love sent damned from hell, to God above? home furnaces burned ... the aching loins of the countless left to cold sheets and pillows unrumpled empty-bed mornings and silent alarms trembling nights, the nightgowns and nightingales painted in moonlight, blue that drowned those hearts in loneliness and chased the virgin vows into warm-and-waiting arms ne'er to be blamed or second-guessed wars drag on ... buoyed by the graft of powers, high but fleshly needs beguile the most faithful of promises spangled ears yearn for the lilt of conversation diamond fingers want for a grasp lips purse for the moistened press of another's and the shadows of war's neglect hide the sins, sensual ... searing and the passions too long unattended ... oh youth is hearkened in the dark regressed for one unfaithful spark how can it harm the lovers, gone as empty eyes convey the dawn? what was ... what IS, your purpose?!? to claim a parcel of dirt or stretch of water that you will just abuse and pollute? to kiss your bloated ego with a mouth of pristine claim? to dig a horrid trench of misery wide enough and deep enough to hold the tears you have wrought in vain? to poison the air with screams, unholy - music of madness, thus strangled from the throats of our precious children? to possess a hill or rill or valley or vineyard or passage that you will neglect and rape in greed? pray, tell me ... I beg, convince me of a lie ... let me believe there is some divine absolution in your god-forsaken actuality ... for it is the best of humanity's minds and motions that have perpetuated your horrors ... oh youth absolved thru grander folly cold and dead, their wreaths of holly sent to graves with careless greed tombstone blossoms, gone to seed. the very best of our acumen and insight and innovation and investment and fruition ... given - freely for the very WORST of our acts - a senseless debt that shames us ALL ... oh, pray ... in the name of all that's precious and holy ... all that we shine and hope and dream and believe in ... in the blessed name of all that we hold most dear ... WHY?!?