The Bloody Stain [sonnet]
Life is just a brief postponement of death
for seconds, hours, days or years to come.
Each moment is a gift — a treasured breath;
the opposite of frozen, stiff or numb.
We’re here to pass through lessons dark and light
so choices made in liberty can soar;
but not as pawns in someone else’s fight
or cattle in the slaughterhouse of war.
Yet, solemn mouths will speak of glory days
on battlefields ‘to safeguard freedom’s reign’.
But war’s a secret money-spinning craze
for power-players’ games — a bloody stain.
Our lives are not for sale to twisted men
whose presence here’s a dark carcinogen.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 