I wrote this after watching a programme which was about a family but PTSD features heavily and this is what came out!
He was a speaker with animals
before the destruction
Feeding them, knowing their ways
Before the fodder was him.
Sent underground to set traps
For an unwitting enemy
A generals mind in foot soldiers body
The damning combination.
A world destroyed a mind fragmented
By bangs, shells, sounds, screams
Some are his own
When he wakes from the sleep
That he tries never to have
Nightmares worse than any day can conjure
He doesn’t speak of what happened
The words are not yet invented
Distractions, diversions, plans
All to keep his mind from being idle
So the torture stays away
He is there but not there
A spectre in his own life
This living breathing moving ghost
Who everyone knows
Yet nobody understands he’s locked in
Always in the terror of then
The time he cannot speak of
He is voiceless and it’s all there
Waiting to explode
At the back of his mind is a thought
Humming louder daily
Death is a mercy, sometimes.
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2019
ailsacawley 