Having left a country to fight its pitiful wars

without his help, he returns home 

 

to a normal that’s become, in his absence,

one more metaphor for war: the boredom

 

interspersed with violent clashes,  the petty

arguments that scale up into anger and hate.

 

His reward for having served his country

is to avoid good fortune at all costs,

 

to take no consolation in a self-sufficient,

loving family tucked away somewhere on the map.

 

For someone’s always grabbing at a throat,

or cursing aloud or snarling like a dog.

 

He’s a man in a bunker, in a crouch,

waiting out the worst of an ongoing battle.

 

He lacks the battleplan to make things better.

He hides away so he doesn’t make things worse.