WW1 ghosts

    Another one. There it sat, resting demurely upon my hat. The little white feather so elegantly cast with the ugliest of motives. They don’t know. They haven’t been where I’ve been. They did not watch as their friends were snatched away by Death, whom I saw in the distant gunfire, Fritz claiming yet another life. They did not shelter in a little dirt coffin, tears merging with blood, innocence merging with horror, as the shells boomed overhead in a relentless greeting from Death himself. They do not still watch friends, family so cruelly taken from me. They do not still here the taunting yelling of the guns. They do not see Fritz himself clamber from the horizon, Death lurking behind every street, every wall, every shadow. No, they see a man; too scared, not a proper man. I am scared. That’s right. And I am ashamed. For they have made me ashamed. They have made me a man in war with himself. And ‘Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not do awful as that of the human mind in ruins’. The fit man who dares wander around when his brave countrymen face war on their own, is a coward. He hides while others fight. Who cares what he’s been through; who cares what he still sees. The blood that trickles down the street appears only for the weak. The machine gun fire is heard only by the cowardice. The whisper of Death at my shoulder, the tickle of His breath on my neck, the lure of his sweet, painless hand haunts by every waking, sleeping hour. Begone! the pain and misery and anguish. The ghosts of my past still stalk my being. The relief death offers proves too much an offer. The white feathers that lie in my path prove unwavering. So if they do not go, away I shall flee. From the looks and the murmurs and the blood and the shells. From the feathers and the spits and the blood and the shells. From the disapproval and the blood and the shells and the blood. The blood and the shells. The blood and the shells. The torment of life and the welcome of death. Away from this misery and the white feathers it brings. Goodbye little white feathers and the misery they bring. Farewell to this torment and hello to my ghosts.