TO TRY
Red, yellow and green.
All appear black.
Tingling with their colourness.
They all try to be real.
One moment in a dark day.
Rain came down in droves
On the cap of a scarecrow
Standing alone in a field of red hibiscus.
Loitering on the edge of a white tank.
Lt. Mister Soldier.
Watches as the wretched enemy.
Rip the clothes away from starved, crying, deserving humans.
Lt. Mister Soldier.
Tries to hold his mind from filling with tears.
As a lady is hanged desperate and crying.
On ropes from the top window of her own house.
Her husband shot dead three times.
And three times more for the three sweet young children.
Lt. Mister Soldier, Breaks.
This one moment in time is not perfect.
So extreme the act, so extreme the grit of desecration.
No image or sound stops Soldier from crying, kneeling.
Tired is he of this field of red hibiscus.
All in the life of Lt. Mister Soldier.
He sees the faces of humans he could have saved.
He listens to the news with a moist eye forever more.
He is the soldier who upheld justice.
They do not deserve to die.
Think the great people.
And with bare fists he stands once again
in the Bosnia of red mist.
He stands up.
He blackens his face.
Ravages through the mud,
Then Lt. Mister Soldier
finds the earth
to which we belong.
December 1999,
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