Bubbles And Smoke

            

Wee little boy of nine;

He squatted beneath the shadows of the large pine;

Blowing out bubbles in delight;

They drifted and soared high like many a kite;

A twisted, warped, transparent world within;

The child realized not the significant of such a scene.

Rims rainbow-hued, they rose and burst;

He comprehended not that it wasn’t a game, but the future beckon of a curse;

His favourite spot, dark;

He’d recall the phantoms with their open maws against the afternoon sky, stark;

Continued happily;

A tiny bird who had just sprouted wings, about to take flight, gently.

**

Eyes unseeing, rolled back;

Faces ashen, hanging; mouths slack;

Limbs splintered, torso heaped;

In terror, his despair spiked and leaped;

“What are these distortions?”

Those young days weren’t delusions…

One inversion, war is sin;

Upright image too, duelling for a cause; no clamour, no din.”

**

Blood smearing his memories;

A pipe touched his lips; the shimmering countenances of forgotten enemies;

A night of haze, an inebriated grey moon;

Curling fumes, erasing recollections of arrows and swords; a blessing, a boon;

Mist engulfing, the plumes chipped;

The old paintings of pretty orbs floating, cruelly nicked.

Fog charred, his spirit frigid and dulled;

Weakened comrades who fought twice as hard, culled;

Sound muffled, yet he coughed;

A trickle of scarlet… But he scoffed;

“If I suffer not for them; those who left;

Who but me shall be proof that they existed, that their families were bereft?”