detritus dream
01/11/2004 03:47 p.m.

There may or may not be a poem in this, but I wanted to get it down before it left with the consciousness of the day…

This morning I woke up after having a dream.  I am soldier alone.  I am in a strange alley or small urban road, fearing what might be around the corner of the building whose wall I am hugging.  I hear voices, one of them the voice of a child whimpering, afraid.  I peek around the corner and there is a mother with her child, both in bedraggled clothing, the child in front walking down stairs or a steep decline concerned about their footing.  The child pulls a door trying to get out of harms way, looking for a place to hide.  It does not budge.  They are getting closer.   I retreat into a doorway to the same building.  I hasten to try to find the door to let in the little girl and the mother.  I open the door and when I look out they are gone.  I am too late.  I wanted to help these poor innocent people without further frightening them. 

Now I am in a courtyard, once a monastery or boarding school or something, but now it tatters and ruin from the war.  I am trying to piece together some camouflage from the detritus, to hide just off a sidewalk that runs between buildings.  I am good at this.  I am a professional.  I stay awhile, pieces of old boards and debris stacked over and around me, but no one has come.  Then I hear voices of men, I look down the sidewalk to my left and see a column of soldiers.  I am not sure if they are enemies or comrades.  I lurch and run to safer grounds fearing that the soldiers will see me, I find a low wall about 30 yards away and hug the ground.  I see young soldiers, probably replacement troops, who are laughing and conversing with each other with ease.  I am just 22 but I feel old and broken and sense the naivety of these novices who do not yet know the horror and futility of this conflict.  I am smelly from my own sweat and filthy from lying in dust and ashes, I am part of the rubble around me.  I feel alone and bereft and momentarily remember my girlfriend back home and the softness of her skin, the freshness of her smile.  She is now in another world—fantasy—not memory.  I am hanging on by my fingers about to fall into the bottomless pit of despair.  Why did I enlist in this mess?  Someone to take care of me, a steady income, promised funding for future education, what were the inane reasons they told me and I wanted to believe?  I am bitter.  Why are we here?  Democracy seems an empty euphemism and a joke right now.  I just want to save my ass.  Fuck their asses.  Fuck the politicians.  Fuck the world.