Nothing Personal

Locked in vision
Streetlight shimmer on the glass I’m kissing
Finger on the curve of a question
Sweat on my palms, calm in my expression

One twitch, red mist on the pavement
Gray matter framed like a painting
Is your life worth taking?
Is your wife a widow in the making?

So close
I can count the lashes on your eyelids
So far
Whole ocean of choices in the silence

Non-related interests
Compressed into a mission
Old hobbies in a shoebox
Next to ammunition

One twitch of a tendon
And the street wears your name
Red letters in the gutter
Gray matter in the rain

Is your life worth taking?
Is your wife awake and praying?
Is that stroller in the corner
yours, or just my imagination?

Nothing personal
Just a cold hearted job
I never wrote this role
But I’m reading every line (so slow)

So close in my scope
So far from my soul
I’m the shadow on your window
I’m the price of letting go

Second thought, second guessing
I don’t even stand
that straight for my country
Still I’m carrying its brand

Static in the earpiece
Orders in a language of numbers
They say “asset”
They say “target”
Never “father,” never “brother”

Your kid’s face in a wallet
Mine’s in a frame
Different Sunday dinners
Same folded flag game

I’m one pulled muscle group
from ending all your days
While my own back spasms
Under someone else’s pay

Nothing personal
Just a cold hearted job
I never wrote this role
But I’m reading every line (oh God)

Is your kid in the window with the nightlight on?
Will your name be a story when you’re gone?
If I take you, do I take them too?
Every path leads right back to you

If I breathe, you live
If I blink, you fall
If I walk away
Will it haunt me at all? (tell me)

Is your life worth taking?
Is your wife awake and praying?
I don’t know your name
Just your pattern of pacing
Just the way you scratch your jaw
when you’re waiting

Nothing personal
That’s the cruelest part of all
I’m a stranger on a rooftop
Deciding if you fall

Is you wife a widow
Waiting for a call tonight
Kids in matching pajamas
Asking why you missed your flight

So close in my scope
So far from my soul
Either way I walk away
Half a human, half a hole

Locked in vision
Trapped, awaiting my decision
Non-related interests compressed into a mission
One triggered muscle group away from losing vital
fluid and gray matter on display
Is your life worth taking?
Is your wife a widow in the making?

So close
So crisp and clear in my scope
Yet so far away
Surreal, while my breath is held so no words to say

Nothing personal
A cold hearted job
Which i didn’t plan on taking first of all

A tear blurs my vision
A blink or two clears it
and reminds me off the tears i shed while
kissing my 4 year old goodbye in the kitchen

I miss you Billy
I miss your mother and the rest of the family

I miss the good times

I miss…

I can’t miss

My rifle seems to live a life of its own
No matter the adjustments i make,
no matter the times i compose myself
and lose count of these pills i take

Finally i get back in my zone
Scoping out the surroundings
and the life i’m supposed to own

He’s gone
No sight on the target
An entire country behind me yet so alone

Day 178; nothing to report

Going home

• Audio Upload: