Unfinished Letters

A pencil whispers secrets to the page.

A pen scrawls out in bitterness and rage;

while typewriters plink, and clink,

and hammer at their ribbon’s ink,

catapulting words at paper walls,

sending soldiers running down the halls,

with orders stuffed in envelopes

dashing everybody’s hopes

that they will all be home before the fall.

A Private in his barracks writes a poem.

His Sergeant scribes an angry letter home.

Then rockets shake, and bullets rake,

and walls collapse, and windows break.

And blood runs o’er the words of each man’s page.

O'er the truth about the waste of war they wage.

But it’s in plinks, and clinks as cold as ice

that we’ll read of their sacrifice,

then fold our paper, sip our coffee, disengage.

RLJ - 2010