Some remnant living in muscle memory <br />is pressed, dressed and polished each time <br />he marches, slowly now and with tired bones, <br />to the Legion for his Friday bingo. <br />His numbers, in all the years, haven't shown <br />as ex-corporal caller turns the wheel <br />and the same bally jokes revolve and drop, <br />snipered, on the half-deaf, half-dead, half-full <br />hall of pensioners with fat pens <br />and luckless grins whose week's entertainment <br />spins and tumbles. Someone checks. They groan. <br />He removes his specs sauntering barwards <br />for his first pint, shouts an old joke, <br />'Hey, you barsteward' <br />takes the barkeeps wince for a smile. <br />He re-enlists each Friday, soldiering on, <br />wishing he might 'fall-out'. <br />Surrender.<br /><br />James Mills<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/war-torn/
