Dedicated to the veterans with whom I work and do my best to help as they are no longer able to do as much as they once did.  It’s a silent tragedy that more veterans and  military members in this modern era die by suicide than have died at the hands of the enemy in this global war on terror.  If you are the praying kind, please keep these men and women in your prayers.

Sleepless Sunrise
by Michael Romani

When heroes start to age
And time turns that page
When heroes are no longer wanted
And the hounds of war are still hunted

The pain gets a little stronger
And recovery takes longer
There's a bleeding inside
It hurts slightly less than wounded pride

What doesn't kill you
Only makes you stronger
The questions grow few
But they could not be wronger

The scars of war
Are only bodily afflictions
It is there in that more
That are the more horrid conditions

There are wounds inside
Horrors lived in the mind
Over and over and cannot be denied
Feelings that cannot be left behind

Tears fill tired eyes
Sleeplessly greeting the sunrise
Born to win and survive
The wondering hero questions why he's alive

Discarded without need
The hero continues to quietly bleed
Thrown epithets of disabuse
He tries to drown out without use

Living on to see yet another day
Because he knows no other way
Find the only way to be okay
Is to fall on his knees and
                   ... pray

(c) July 17, 2017  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved