This War in Our Loins

War is a drug. The Hurt Locker

We are men and this war
in our loins makes us so.

We become hunters of other men
and their good thoughts of kindness

and their salving fears
making them come to kneel

before reason and its shadows
and their knowledge why they hate

the derring-do we have in strange cities
them who see the moon differently,

red crescent and courage in the iridescence
of that afterglow we do not see

but exists in between believing
and raising our hands in prayer

even as they do the same
in whispers, before early sunrises

and after when, in the long lines
of waiting for home away from home

they spell freedom with their callused
hands marked for the betrayal

we are about to commit.
It is this gospel of war

we announce in codes
of the masculine that we are.

And in the holy mourning
by the morning of grief we deny

that it has come, the enemy
concocts a word that enchant

us so war will not become us
so war will not become our name.

This war in our loins
makes us men and we are not.

Hon, HI