Post Traumatic Stress

"This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow-

First chill, then stupor, then the letting go."… Emily Dickinson

Post Traumatic Stress

Great pain comes after a foe's been downed.
First a formal feeling and self-denial.
A dead enemy without a human sound.
Another terrorist killed, a bloody pile

upon the sand, a corpse of bone and bile.
A young soldier gapes at the lifeless mound
frozen and numb of an act so vile.
Great pain comes after a foe's been downed

and seeing a person dead on the ground.
A husband, a father, a man with a smile-
an entity like himself pound for pound.
First a formal feeling and self-denial

and days and nights of turmoil and trial,
of anguish and suffocation like a drowned
man thrown overboard in the murky Nile.
A dead enemy without a human sound

haunts nightmares and dreams. Around
each corner, in every supermarket isle
ghastly grins, ghostly visages abound
of other terrorists killed, bloody piles.

Home again, nerves on edge, easy to rile,
a lost soul waiting to be found.
A life ticking away like hands on a dial
Great pain comes.