Young men and women do volunteer

To fight for their country to the death, showing no fear

Their orders arrive just as they would

Off they go overseas in the hopes of doing good

Then there’s reality, oh the shock

Our core cultural values, by their ways they do rock

Women are property, used for sex

Sold to the highest bidder, the western mind perplexed

Wanting to react, but told they can’t

They turn a blind eye, though to each other they do rant

Lying in their cots, many tears shed

This war was not what they thought, they have all been misled

Romantic ideas, wars of the past

Live only in the movies there’s no way they could last

War is not romantic, kill and maim

Each victim has a mother and each face has a name

Someones left mourning, crying revenge

Seeking to draw blood, to honor loved ones they avenge

How do pray tell, will this cycle end

When it’s all about oil, our interests they pretend

After a decade, I doubt it will

The military industries haven’t had their fill

When this war ends another will come

Reasoned by our government, just watch and see their fun

Be sure and take my word, more will die

No matter how we complain, no matter how we try

As always, our young will volunteer

Believing propaganda from mongers they will hear

Gung-ho with ideals, noble ‘tis true

Witnessed in commercials they’re the brave, the proud, the few

Til God forbid the time ever comes

You gaze into their eyes, pull the trigger of the gun

From that moment on your life will change

You become a killer, a feeling that must be strange

Hoping that the reasons are pure, true

To live with such an action, the rest of your life through

Mourn for those who died and those alive

They will never be the same no matter how they strive

Mourn this generation raised with war

Think about the reasons, they are poisoned to the core

What kind of legacy will we leave

One that’s draped in death, they are constantly left to grieve

Can this end before it is too late

I pray that it can or destruction will be our fate

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

NOTE: Origination Afghanistan – a landay has only a few formal properties. Each has twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love. Within these five main tropes, the couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.  The full description and some history of the form can be found at poetryfoundation.org.  I took some liberties with this form as it does not translate perfectly into English.  I did maintain the 9 and 13 syllables per line format, but eliminated the “ma” or “na” ending sound requirement opting instead to rhyme which can occur with this form.