War Memorial (Poetry)

It feels useless now
this pang of sorrow
for youth so squandered
believing they fought
for a better world

With their high ideals
held-tight bravado
they all marched away
from the land they knew
and found foreign graves

That generation
of lost potential
took freedom’s promise
bled it into soil
that didn’t know them

Once bright college boys
dead as aliens
bones left miles across
some vast plotted field
just names listed here

alphabetical
glory undermined
by realization
each blood sacrifice
proved a bitter waste