That Country

I am a soldier for love.
Love, the all engulfing continent spread north to south and east to west, floating just above subconscious. That country whom all call home. That country whose flags wave day in, day out, in tact or battered, striped, checkered, sometimes surrendered. Pride and shame and patriotic idiotic chagrin blame their claim to fame namelessly on this coast to coast motherland fatherland brother sister Loverland.

The army the armed forces going up against all those who hate who cannot love. Most volunteer, most scribble their drunken mark dotted across contracts, drunk from such pheromones and hormones or love and lust. They don such feeble tin hats and helmets and guns loaded with kindness not bullets that make ribbons of flesh and shreds of hope; these do not protect them as confidently they- the army- those soldiers for love- make their haggard way through rejections and unforeseen breakups and worse of all worse than death loves unrequited. Though unprotected and as naked to the world as their birth they- the army- vulnerable as ever forge through swamps and quagmires to graveyards whose cup hath runneth over of broken souls and tents pitched by shards of bones. Dismal and dismaying as it can be those sunny-side-up soldiers for love trudge through to promise lands known and unknown painted for them by Optimism.

I was not as willing in my headlong foray into Love and her foreign bosom. Never detached nor ignorant of her pacifist presence only justifiably cautious when wading in such deep waters off her shallow shores. Though being born human with no permission requested I too at that exact moment was born in Love, always within her borders no matter how far around or from Earth I traveled, always a citizen a denizen a reluctant representative of Love. Some volunteer, some are drafted. I never had the luxury of drunken logic at my side to sign my mark for me with no cowardice no regret only false confidence.

Then one day saw her and in one instant my existence was explained to me in everything but words and as a grace note at the footnote of that instant she was gone forever invisible in the fuzzy static of this horrible nation. No I was drafted or dragged rather to be sized and measured for my own personal journey to the Promise Land that Elysium that paper mache meadow full of construction paper poppies. I fit a tin helmet and was wished well as Love at first sight pulled me sank me hand in lead-heavy hand to the depths of complete abyss filled to the brim of nothingness. Near me comrades of complicated destinies and dismantled concupiscence wait unbelieving tethered to the bottom of an empty ocean for the utterly unlikely. They too- those soldiers of love- clutching their kindness loaded guns all too trigger happy wait for their one instant to replay itself a glitch in a blip on a radar. Some old some very young and some like me neither old nor very young but evenly displaced in this time line.

I waited what could have been years or days for that ghostly figure to saunter down like star dust scraped from a meteor in a night sky, starkly contrasting. I was drafted to fight for Love- to soldier on though on leads no where or everywhere. I waded, I sloshed through morass after morass before I waited those cold years or days for my instant to come rushing back to me. Just when I thought it was over I was overwhelmed that my weightless waiting was fulfilled to fruition. As she sauntered from heaven or hell I clutched the hem of her sundress and all was illuminated as I was pulled north to Salvation to the Promise Land promised so long ago. As I looked below my dangling feet the sallow faces I neighbored grew dimmer as they looked not at me but past me to the heavens or to hell for their star dust star-crossed lover to settle on them. Promised land is barren without vehement passion and love so intense the grass grows itself. On closer inspection the paper mache hills flowed in the breeze covered in soft bristles of hair-like grass greener than green. The flowers wept sweet nectar scents and attracted the eye with arrogant efficiency.

Destiny has no home in the swirling chaos created by such a clever universe to confuse and capture logics and realities and most misunderstood of all- truths. Truths defined by other truths smaller or larger truths brick by brick backing the enormity of consciousness impenetrable. Truth is destined to be homeless if destiny were true blue. Eye there is the rub when I locked blue eye to green eye I knew my destiny and backed it up with those bricks of truths. My destiny was this singularity in the anomaly of truth the enigma of our chaotic cosmos swinging like an out of synch pendulum waiting to finally match everyone's ticks and tocks. This green eyed sun dressed nebula floating into my life unannounced and leaving it ripping every bone and muscle with her. Such swift segues enter stage right exit stage left must be written somewhere, they are truths can they too be destinies or are they mutually exclusive mutually elusive phenomena never to be explained? No- that truth spelled the destiny like two magnets ready to mate north to south and that destiny clarified the truth. My soul my promise lands promised so vaguely at the beginning the ends to my means awaits me across those barren battle fields splintered with lost causes and givings up. Hand in air-light hand we skipped from one day to the next like stepping stones to the doors of endless time infinity never registering through the filter of burning adoration immortal.

However you find yourself in the army- the armed forces for Love- you are soldiers defending That Undeserving Country; utterly without reproach. Yet millions of immigrants and emigrants and pilgrims on one-way sojourns find themselves drying on her shores.