BEFORE I GO TO WAR ( WRITTEN BY Elijah Peter.)

here is another poem for your reading pleasure by Elijah Peter.

BEFORE I GO TO WAR

The gun spoke

The traveler’s words

Too far to miss

Another son buried in the flag.

And my tender passion weeps

For the coach that comes at night

To carry me to the deep,

Where only boxes return

But do not cry

Your gentle tears are far too precious

Let your heart whine in the music

For tonight is our love song.

Hold me tender\

Kiss me light

For this is our only night

Before I go to war

Would you say you love me?

If the world ends tonight?

Tomorrow the guns will call me

And I will bludgeon like a fool

And the bullets would wail

In my bloody plaited hair

And the dust would gently scatter

The grenades glorious laugh

And friends will no more talk

Or chase the enemy’s song

Too tired to remember the tune

That sends me to the coach

Too hungry to feel

The taste of your lips

Humbled by the memories

Of the countless blood I spill

No more the gentle prince

That sends chills down your spine

Too hard to redeem

The blood that I am immersed in

I scurry to the dearth

To save myself from the demons

I may have left as your man

But I return in a flag

Too proud to play your lover

Till I was humbled by death

And you will cry at my end

As the guns shout salute.

But even if I return

I would return a broken song

Whose tune has been diminished

By countless voices who have sung

I would return as a shadow

Of many voices placed

All the friends that went with me

Will return in my head

And we will make a lonely world

That would never remember

What it felt like to be your love

On a cold morning stead.

So in all I will be the fool

For this war will be our end

But I am a man, my pride is my vain

I must rise to my demise

But before I go to this war

I have to hold your hand,

Under the moon as its light sings our song

And tell you that you are love

In all its basic truthful form

For tomorrow the coach would have been gone

And the only return I would get

Is either a flag and a gun salute

Or a carrier of man’s greatest faults.

 written by Elijah peter