Author Information
Collateral Damage
Folder:
Military/Patriotic Today a father won’t be home,
The bomb I drop will blow him to kingdom-come.
A child will cry itself to sleep.
An anguished wife will weep.
A mother’s son, no longer to hold
Possibilities cut short, a life story untold.
This collateral damage, no one sees,
Is the vision that will forever haunt me.
For this is the face of war
Man’s inhumanity to man, and what for?
A little piece of dirt or for what we believe?
How do you explain it to a child, mother, or wife in their grief.
The child will grow to a woman or man,
With intense hate for what we did to their land.
The cycle will continue, unless God exerts his hand,
To end the hate and suffering throughout the land.
My mission is complete. I turn for home.
To wife and family, I will arrive about the time
His family gets the news…
He is gone.
That is very nice. From a military wife who's husband is gone, once again, I say THANK YOU!
Cynthia
You have a wonderful way of expressing what many people feel and putting it into a form which most people would not consider. I beleive you have a unique ability to hit a person in their emotional solarplexis. Keep up the good work. As for a critique, you already know the problems with this as you stated to me in a private e-mail.
Hey Huck, this was a really good poem. I think it does catch the grief that people would feel if they lost someone in a war. And the part about: "How do you explain it to a child, mother, or wife in their grief.
The child will grow to a woman or man,
With intense hate for what we did to their land." These lines catch the truth about how hatred grows from person to person and it does involve war and losing someone thorough them. My grandpa was in WW2 and my dad doesn't like any kind of foreign people because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was a great poem and it didn't matter if you went off meter or not. Always keep writing.
Katie
This is GREAT! This along with an open mind gives a completley different turn on the world, thank you for writing such a great piece of work
Its very heavy to critique this poem, because my son was killed during NATO bombing my town - as collateral dammage. I can not express my emotion abouth this by words, I was done it with music, on next URL:
http://www.musicans.com/boreas.html
You have all my respect,
Nikola