Questions aof Honor

Look!
	now they sleep      bloodless warriors
	pandemonium stilled      agony slain tranquil
	death sanctified in rigid cartesian rows
	honored for their sacrifice and selfless valiance
	laid to rest beneath mourning grasses

Ask!
	where was the higher honor due them      before war
	are sacred vows      to be profaned      to be misemployed 
       	  	                  
Why!
	do once verdurous lives lay cold and pulseless
	as spatters of red petals      tearfully fall
	families breathing wistful flowers
	distilling rue      with lulling scents

Adjudge!
	all men      who enact lies
	dishonoring crossed graves
	greed calibrating scales of injustice
	bodies tilted high by tonnages of gold
	Aurelian kisses      vaulting wars riches

Do Not!
	dishonor a warrior’s willingness to die
	for bravados mouth is a soldier’s tomb
	do not forsake truth and honor    our only faithful ally
	ask ten-thousand whys      before one soldier dies
	before the bugler's breath      sounds death's lamenting cries

Think! 
	Contemplate war’s fiery womb
	hatred    born inextinguishable
	good & evil     indistinguishable
	
Look, what stillborn bones lie locked in battle
	this fleshless monster      we mis-named peace         


gv.2014

Matthew 6:13 . . . deliver us from “evil”
Evil as translated in 6:13 is "Poneros" A name also attributed to Satan 
Which means:  "he is not content unless drawing others into the same destruction as himself"
(From Lexicon to the New Testament by Spiros Zodhiates, TH.D


"Soon 
the world 
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out."

A line from Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1917 poem , Call To Account


“They made a wasteland and called it peace” Publius Cornelius Tacitus