Where I died before I was born

I was a hero then.

In tattered fatigues,

Camouflaged blackened face

With mama’s eyeliner,

I dug trenches, built barricades

Around fanciful dreams,

Enacted the best

Of Commando comics –

I loved the Air force:

Vroom , swooosh…I somersaulted, I turned

Ta-ta-ta, dish-keow…my gunner killed, maimed.

 I always returned to a waiting family.

She was always there to place flowers on my grave

With that strange epitaph ‘he died before he was born’.

But then she died

And I decayed.

Nightmares kept me awake

With a lullaby about my brave deeds:

I smiled, rubbed my hands with glee

When I dropped Fat Man and Little Boy

My mustache nearly singed

While I watched flesh vapourizing below;

I was a glad voyeur

In those killing fields, in that nation called Tragedy,

I hooted and cheered, a spectator’s sport it was

While my friends raped and killed women with blank eyes;

I bombed the bunker at Amiriyah in Feb 1991

Man, it was a blast

Thousands, dude, thousands within

They lie when they say it was innocent parents, children.

Why am I there

In all those wars where I died before I was born?

And now, when I should be telling grandkids grand tales

I have to go for my real war

Well within the border, with my own lot.

I blasted my superior about keeping me inferior;

Do you know how he squealed and begged

When my fingers closed around his windpipe

And I pulled it out, blood-spattering good it was!

I watched paid-goons rule the street

Tormenting, dictating, calling me slave;

I waited, I promised, I conned masses

To follow me Spartacus to fight like animals.

Then, one night I heard them on my land

They said it is not mine no more

For the last fight, I unsheathed my sword, charged

Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Blinded, deafened by the roar of their blazing guns.

I have to go for my real war

Where I died before I was born.