Lost Soldier

I know I said I’d never let you go. I didn’t. It was you that let me go, us go, you must know that.

I remember when we were rank and file, warriors on the ground, full of fire, hope, camaraderie.  We recognized the profundity that sometimes it takes an Armageddon to truly win. We were John the Baptist, preparing the way, and The Postman planning the recovery. We breathed one anothers breath, beat of the same heart. I would nestle into your neck and tell you how I couldn’t stand one more moment without you inside me. We renewed eachother for the fight, love feeding honor, spirit feeding truth, vulnerability feeding resolve in the cool morning air in the tents.

Perhaps your star was too bright, because the lure of the officer’s club kept you out longer and longer each night. They tamed that star, with strategy sessions and ever new ways of manipulating the message until the real message was lost. Until your platoon itself became shades to you. Until I became an echo of something theoretical, unreal. The dream became life, and life became dream.

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?

“You just don’t understand,” you said, “they really are good people. They have only the best interests at heart.”  That is how they get your soul, you know. Not by breaking your spirit, but feeding it with empty things, illusions of what is happening out here, screen shots and computer generated simulations of real life. The officers world is to the real world what ashes are to trees.

Che knew. Floyd knew. I thought you knew too.

Our little stronghold was taking hits, the wounded were crying for help.  They sent the USO for an hour, minstrels instead of bandages, they sent platitudes instead of arms. The brass is a circus and we needed soldiers, we needed you.

Is the boy soldier still in there? The rebel? Has the fire been put out by with polite chardonnays, our desires lost to details? I remember the smell of your body next to mine, the silk of your voice in the morning.

I used to say it takes an Armageddon for rebirth. The army is dwindling one by one, and I wonder if the bang or the whimper lead to the same abyss of nothingness that always lets the bad guys win.

Maybe some can walk in both camps, but most who eat at the table forget what the field is like. It blurs to them, fades.

We moved the commune/camp while you were gone. It is smaller now, so many of the infantry lost, women, men, the young and brazen, the old and wise. Beaten down or bored or distracted, tricked or killed. In some cases all of the above.  The army isn’t lost, its just up to you to find your way back to it, lost soldier. Up to you to pick up the shovel and build the ramparts to protect the people. Up to you to decide if your soul, the very core of you remains.

I am weary, but many hands make light the work. Perhaps that boy is truly gone now, grown into someone else. Maybe he never existed at all, only played army guys with toy soldiers.

But we are here. We are. We have to fight on.

Revolutions need leaders. Revolutions need foot soldiers down in the dirty guerrilla camps. You cannot get here without the work of the there.

It is you that left us, lost soldier, abandoned the camp incrementally. Use your compass. If it points straight in, you will find your way. If it points any other way? Well, then I let go of what was already long lost.

How I wish…