Blood. Blood. Blood.

Alive. You jive. Symbolic transgressions of a battlefield with wars lost, blood shed, and no war is ever won. How do you want to be remembered? Can you not carve your legacy out of the lard of life? Honesty, Integrity, Personal Courage.

I stand in front of monoliths and kneel. I see all of our heroes in it's black rectangular stature. John Wayne is a smiling and he wants us to kill the civilians. Kill them all. Let God sort them out. That's God with a capital G of course. The one and only.

John and Clint shoot first and then ask questions. There are bombs going off all around us. The media is pumping terrible news of death and destruction. Conservative or Liberal it is all negative. I want requiem. A place to go back to the innocence experienced while holding my breath waiting for summer to be over. Bored out of my gourd, playing kick the can till 9 p.m. I used to sit in a little corner of my yard and lay still like a sniper and wait for birds to land for just a second while I zeroed my scope of my 20 pump Daisy air rifle.

I would brag about how if I pumped it to 20 it was surely the strength of a .22 caliber rifle. I must have wasted hours shooting round after round. Learning to Kill. I joined the army after 911 in order to kill. I had bought in. Hook. Line. And sinker. I didn't go to war. I was stationed in California where I learned how to clean a toilet and buff a floor. And I now know that a police call is not calling any police, and a G.I. party is no party at all.

Several years later I sit behind another government desk, but now as a civilian. I never got to kill for this country. I never got to see death. I never got to see war. And I count my blessings. And I thank god. And I thank God. And try to be a hero. Now not for me, or for my country. But for my family.

Thank you God that I did not have to see death. Thank you God that I did not have to kill. Thank you God that my family will have me in their lives instead of some folded American flag. And please, tell John I said Hi.