Homeless Soldier

I once owned a uniform that shone in pride The polished brass, creases and lines An army of friends and civilian respect I marched upon every street, placed every laureate The glowing admiration, the tireless market Of gazing faces that sung even to the heartless Badgered by memories that I couldn’t forget Now withered and worn the years of regret My mental battle the suffering toll of silence No words I could mouth about the raw entirety Flashbacks of those wars supplying me But I sit a cluster of before My battlefield a daily occurrence of aimlessly wandering In routine emergence of seeking cigarette butts and borrowing more time and beer To drown out the battle none but mine could hear I clamber from bush broken sunlight, coughing up The empty sobriety of reality Just a used device a human resource Hoodwinked and lead noose in ignorant obligation A never-ending instigation from mind emancipation From this dumb founded degree of humiliation Drunken laughter upon this man once bold Pissing on the soul, and soles of my ragged boots I couldn’t maintain or even hold Completely neglected by all I did serve Now served by a starvational solitude A face that none could remember, a shadow of my youth Just aloof, wandering every day until my feet give up from the holes in my boots Until I drop dead like the rest of the ‘glorious dead’ Should have been left with my rifle on a battlefield proper Something my mind could accept, something I would now offer. And who would care and would begin to wonder Who these men were and why in such slumber After all I am just a homeless soldier.