Fire At Will (Original Version) Poem by Ted Sheridan

The questions you ask young lady, young man
of our nation and my generation, is nothing unexpected.
Just like the blood our dead brothers and your forefathers shed;
they have and always will beg to be given answers.
And to those of us who have seen and survived War’s red fire.
Those answers are like the hallowed sounds of the silenced dead.
And to you, like only more empty words; written but not understood.
To be held in suspicion and with contempt by a dark blindness
of truth and light. Freedom means nothing to those
who have never had to fight for the love of a country.
Freedom is nothing more than some whored out allegiance
recited by the morally impaired and wounded as their flag
passes in parade or is raised to honor those memorialized by time.
In truth, Freedom is a phenomenon
known only to those who have sacrificed; who have lived with its scars
and nightmares of horror and deadly warfare.
While to those who have only benefited from this long and gifted
national treasure; to those neophyte’s untrained ears,
the answers we gave as reasons are only anthems veterans proudly hail;
old fashioned patriotism and imperialist propaganda now stale.
When the point of fact is young lady, young man…..
we the tired, we the old….have lied to cover the truth; not of what we did
but rather that of what we had to do….and would do again if so asked.
Out of a deep and abiding love for what God and America have
given to us all…
“Freedom is not just another word”
It is the basis of all that is good
and the destruction of all that is evil.

2008 © T S