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Life Arts    H4'ed 8/5/23

Russian conscript


Gary Lindorff
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He said It's time to be willing

To die for the motherland

And stamped my papers

But I want my daughter to live in peace!

Men are born to fight, he said

Don't be a wimp

Then he got gloomy and looked at the floor


I thought of my friends

Who electrocuted toads

I thought of the stone fights and the day

I knocked my brother's best friend to the ground

Because I wanted to pay my brother back

For all the humiliations

That add up until your blood boils over


I asked him Why do men fight?

I asked the gloomy man

Who just stamped my papers

That put all my dreams on hold

And he didn't look up

Instead he stacked some papers

And said

Because we don't know who we are


Then I woke

And I only dimly recalled

Going home

To tell my wife

My daughter's mother

Who my mother warned me

Was too good for me

That I was a conscript in the Russian army

Not the hard-working dreamer

That she married anymore


(Article changed on Aug 06, 2023 at 7:45 AM EDT)

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Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and (more...)
 

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