Broken pencil poetry. Why

I seem to take a lot of breaks from writing. But you know, life happens and you need to be there and live it with full attention. Now I am back and I'd like to write a little bit more here. Not necessarily for others, but for myself.

Once upon a time, when I was in high school, I was getting ready for the school olympics. One of the subjects I was going for was Romanian (my mother language) literature. We were supposed to do a literary analysis of a poem and explain the writer's intent and how they conveyed that through lyrical instruments: rhythm, similes, metaphors and so on. I ended up reading a lot of poetry during those days. The more cryptic and interesting, the better.

I would also write my own poetry. Most of my high school poems are bound in my little self-published book. Anyway...

I was getting ready for the olympics and I was waiting for my teacher to come up to the classroom, but she was running late. The room being on the 3rd floor with no elevator didn't help matters any either.

So I composed a poem in my head while I was waiting for her. It was all in Romanian and it had perfect rhythm and rhyme. The funny thing is that I never write that way. I only write in English and always in free verse. But this one was different.

The poem was about a soldier and how he went to war and his fight for a good cause. It was a great poem. It was a perfect poem. And it flowed with ease, as if I were reading it, instead of making it up on the spot. I didn't write it down, because I knew that as soon as I would put pen to paper, the flow of ideas would break. So I just wrote it in my mind, where it still dwells, faded to the point of being only a memory.

Now, years later, I have been inspired once again to write about war. But a more dark look on it. A friend once asked my opinion on the current events in Ukraine. I said it was all a terrible waste of human lives. I still see it that way. So here it is, a little poem about the question that can never be properly answered.

 

Why
29th of June 2023


The mud is slippery under their boots
And the air smells of gun powder.
There are gun shots from all around,
With artillery puncturing the din
Like bolts of thunder.

Now and then, a sharp yell of pain can be heard.
Other times, the men fall instantly, quietly,
Like wheat cut by a sickle.
The wheat that used to grow on this very field
Before it turned into a bloody tableau.

What drove these men to fight?
What compelled them to kill?
What sent them to be sacrificed?
For even if they survive the war,
Inside them something will have died.

They may never stop to think
Whom it is they are killing,
What that person's name is,
Who loves them and what makes them smile.
The people they are shooting
Are now nothing more than stalks of wheat.
History will come later
To dig graves and build memorials.

History will come later
To try to explain why.
But no explanation could ever justify
This hell on earth.