The Forever War Poem by Kevin Patrick

On distant worlds where foreign suns
Leave no sheltering skies
Men wage arms to their cold purgatories;
And envy those that die
For the marching drums of android drones
Mark their coming of age
To atomic shells, that ranges the distance
With the sound of rage
Spewing sinews and chewing flesh
Leaving those that live to their duress
To their forever war


And on they fight, with mantle bright
Gleaming with technology
Though soon they learn the harsh physics
Time makes no apologies
For decades pass on light-years mass
Old soldiers are immortal born
In armoured shells of carbon bonds
Their souls are now forever worn
Between the fateful throw of dice
For which peace of mind is their Price
Fighting their forever war


And within the din of a craters heart one man stands forlorn
He looks to a star, and knows by instinct
That it is the place of home
And when his tour of duties comes
He cannot understand
with his return, his reward for service
A stranger in familiar lands
With all his lost there’s nothing left
but returning to the page
So once more onto the breech
he goes to the butcher’s cage
In his forever War

For the country that’s been his duty
Will not see its promised son
But a stranger that walks the world alone
With all his gains undone
To a world they cannot go back
Back to the hell they are entrapped
In his forever war