Into The Night 

        Into the night you walk a boy about to become a man. The answer comes, its duty for his God his country and corps. Yes that’s right the United States Marine Corps. There will be no time to think of being a child and that game of sports you loved to play. This is another day and another way. Tears and cries as bullets fly and the kat-kat-kat sounds of A-K 47s coming from your front and where you are heading. There is no time to think of being a child or the kick off back home, the name of the game now is to get them before they get you. Then when the screaming and the pop-pop-pop- and the kat-kat-kat stops. You are sitting there in your boots holding a hot weapon as you watch your buddies being put in body a bag, some are just body parts of a man that was only a child just the other day with the guts still laying all around on the bloody ground. After seeing this a few times you don’t want your buddy to be put in a body bag so you stop having buddy’s, you become numb to the world: Your weapon becomes your best and only friend and you know that if you take care of your weapon it will take care of you.      You don’t want to know how sweet it is back home so you stop reading the letters, hell you will never see home again, you look at these young faces knowing that you may be one of the walking dead. Just a matter of time it all happens again and you think the one in the body bag, they are the lucky ones. Now that the years have passed my thoughts of yesteryears are as fresh as this morning and it is like an open sore with salt being poured in them: Then I think it is true that no one cares for a warrior after the war. Some people fish some people play golf to relax and clear their minds.

        I live on Beef Hide Mountain in S.E. Kentucky the same Mountain I was born on and grew up on. I do art; that is my therapy, l have one buddy name Valentine who is also an artist and a dog name Timex. I have not seen Val in nine years or so but I talk to him every now in then. Valentine thinks some of you will buy my art, although I did not take any art classes, my God gave me the talent to paint and has keep me alive to share my art with you.

 I traded my youth for a Silver Star, three purple hearts and forty years of night mares. What year’s I have in front of me I would like to share with you.

L.D.Mullins