Some of them come back crawling
Sleep in their parent’s arms for a crib
And suck bottles of alcohol
They wear flags for bibs
And drool gunpowder
Therapy sessions are just changing diapers
Some shit don’t come clean
They tend to throw their food at the dinner table
Shape their apple sauce into sand dunes
Use the spaghetti for road maps
Wear fruit cups like helmets
And try to use the brocolli for cover
They will dig through their birthday cakes
Looking for the person they were last year
Lick the icing from their knuckles
And say they didn’t find anything
With the most innocent of heartaches
They always leave their toys thrown about the room
Only now they are strategically placed to resemble
Afghani sand towns
The helicopters all lay overturned
The little green men are in a state of confusion
And none of them point in the same direction
Be careful of the little things
They are choking hazards
Such as whistling in the wrong tune
The pop of a book dropping
They will try to swallow the shrapnel and grenade pins
Their first words will be
I don’t belong here
None of them come back “home”
How easily words are forgotten when they lose their meaning
It is called deployment as if there is a parachute attached to them when the stork drops them back over friendly soil
But the chute doesn’t always open right
And can wrap around their necks like umbilical cords
How ironic to die during birth
This is what happens when you send children off to war
Their voice cracks like muzzle fire
And they start to grow hair on their innocence
Their hairlines become afraid of the steel in their eyes
They really think they can hide it all with camoflouge
It isn’t enough that they come back alive
The same way someone taught them how to be a soldier
Someone has to teach them not to be
And let the children go back to the playground
