Frontline Sacrifice

War Poem about a young soldier who sees going to war as an escape from unemployment and ends up taking the fall for a general.

Frontline Sacrifice

I choke beneath this tightened noose, 

For crimes I did not commit,

I was road kill, trapped in the high beams,

Blindly I followed orders,

I lied and took the fall for him,

Out of fear, out of control,

My lack of self govern,

My cowardice would condemn me.

He never imagined himself on the frontline,

A money making machine in these trying times,

Turned to money making monster,

The ideal was drastically different to the decomposing reality,

He didn't understand the possible consequences,

He jumped in feet first, in a frenzy of panic,

A vulnerable victim of a flawed foreign policy?

Or a vindictive villian hell bent on political revenge?

The situation. Now out of hand,

They drained your soul and hung it out to dry,

Covering up with sagacious honour,

"Your country needs you",

Life tossed aside,

The sudden realisation of my lack of importance,

My life is not mine.

Like the fall of the Berlin wall,

He crumbled beneath the strain, 

Only yesterday he was playing cops and robbers,

Today he is caught, 

In the mangled mess of war politics,

Vulnerable.

With the bright light of fear in his eyes,

A prisoner of pressured choices and inflation.

I never thought my life would come to this,

I pulled my goggles over my eyes,

And looked to the sky with hazy vision, 

He would never feel guilty,

Because he would always be more than I could ever be,

I was seeing the world through a different perspective,

The trees were shining fresh, fleshy green,

Yet I knew I would never be free.