The VA and the Pentagon
Have fused compassion, smarts and cure
To focus clinically upon
An ill as long as wars endure:
Post-traumatic stress disorder,
Cleaned-up term for age-old horror.
Shell shock, later, battle fatigue,
The consequences coincide.
Whatever war, they’re of a league:
Blank stares, depression, suicide.
And homicide, PTSD
Compounds its range of savagery.
Its sufferers in other times
Were labeled cowards, shot at dawn,
Or sent back to the battle lines
To grow more senseless, more withdrawn.
Which one of us can call them weak?
Who, dodging bullets, wouldn’t freak?
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