Agent Smith

On thinking of a fence built halfway,  
only to be torn down piece by piece    
and used for firewood  
to cook slices of bologna and hot-dogs    
under smokey bridges where spoons bent to bullets    
layed out on steel tracks,    
still ringing down passageways    
and splitting through tunnels out over cornfields.    
As your eyes turned colors    
you still felt real  
until training and enlistment commenced,  
hidden behind the fallen past,  
stained with that lacquered fence
the umbilical blood of detention and that bastard child.  
   
Every beer can was crushed when you came back  
from the middle  
of that smoldering campaign in the east  
looking for those weapons of mass destruction  
underneath a broken table holding a 30-rack of Budweiser.  
   
They made you pull the trigger for peace across  
the oil slick promised lands  
but left you alone to wipe the blood off your rifle.  
Now we argue about their innocence and military coups in a stifle,  
your baby looks beautiful and you are always inciteful,  
but you made your eyes turn red a long time ago    
and your exhaled breath burns of cheap whiskey  
as the words queer towel head leaves your mouth  
while grasping for a glass handle to hold onto.  
The sound you make
screams around corners  
unfamiliar    
in crowded Baghdad streets.
Secret campaigns to hold onto like a pride filled sponge,  
expected to be squeezed for a lifetime
as tears hit a cold garage floor  
in between tire rotations
somewhere far away from me now.    
   
I want to give comforting for the tong-biting  
jaw-clenching spasms,    
and mouth awareness for the post-traumatic    
inebriating moments, when desert sand fills your helmet    
and boots start sinking you empty  
down another fifth to focus
on retirement prospects    
after serving.
Exclaiming our country is greedy and unthankful.  
How many lives have dropped before?  
How many are left standing, serving the grateful?  
How many went launching through the air    
from hidden roadside IED's?  
Shrapnel wounded teenagers discussing death
on plane trips home
and dreaming of life outside the armed forces.  
A pawn in the game leaves my mouth
and destroys my friendships like a desert storm.   
I make new acquaintances with broken down vets    
chained to neverending ant lines,    
encircling local veterans hospital buildings.  
More well equipped to destroy than to be kept from starvation and not becoming destroyed themselves. 
Picking out the bone marrow and filling each    
with lead to fight the fight    
and come home like ticking dynamite.  
Who came home to many lies and
spitting out hate for a country who hates  
bloody wars you were a part of since graduation.  
Negating the entire situation  
and even the doomsday clock,  
to be able to sleep at night while clutching onto your glock.
Semi-automatic is what you are to me,
as we both continue to breath.
The fence no longer stands where it was once built.
When I pass by that spot where we used to play as children
all I see is a wall.