An excerpt from “The Scholar’s War”

To my modern day Esau

Woe and misery is all what is left for me

My only, my modern, my blessed Esau,

For neither did Abraham, to God his flesh and blood too,

Or the Spirit condemned on Golgotha, I believe,

Gave a greater sacrifice, my blessed Esau.

Lament with me, for our fate should have been clear:

Namesake not, but by conviction alone I fear

Sealed our lives, the stage built, the play written.

Patriarchal absence, blinded by strange women,

Maternal uselessness, muddled by alcohol sheer.

Tried our hardest, however, did we.

I turned inward, found peace within the soul

And cultivated the mind, filling those holes.

You turned outward, developing strongly,

And those gaps, instead of searching, destroyed them whole.

Then came those mechanical horseman, we saw

That quartet bring fire and brimstone,

Called upon by sisters Politica and Justica.

Divided we became, I in my ivory tower’s tome,

You in your metal bronzed goddess Arma.

Then the roll calls and warrants came,

Dragging us into a period of martial bane.

You plundered, you shot, you killed,

Many a mind, painted a terrorist, your ilk billed.

We in our towers, you in your bases,

Dismissing us to the numbers of nameless

Death tolls in the name of sameness.

Is it no surprise we took your same arms,

Tired of the futility of pacifist charms

And silver tongue talks?

Myself I joined a ragtag brigade,

Doctors, lawyers, teachers, librarians, they made

And planned offenses, defenses, strategies;

Futile it would be, as what could you

In our hard press times expect us to do

With mere arrows and slings compared

To your cannons and metal horses

Announcing death at every street corner

Once populated with mothers, daughters,

Now filled with the dead, numbers rising.

And there you stood. I laughed at fate herself,

Eternity passed even before we heard the bell.

You, my only flesh and blood left standing,

My first comrade, my blood comrade.

You turned, looked at me. The tears I could see

Ran down as minutes turned into hours,

Hours into days and days into nights.

Yet only half minutes passed.

Before you pulled the trigger.

Christ couldn’t have made a greater sacrifice.