A Shell of Oxymoron

   In a Carolina skiff

I start a new adventure

My quest to find a place

Where no one before has ventured 

Searching for the rarest shell

To add to my collection

I skip across the water

In a new found direction

 I see - very strange structures

Along the Outer Banks

Through my squinted eyes

They look like rusty army tanks

 So...I race to shore - drop anchor

And jump out on the sand

And find myself transplanted

In a strange and eerie land 

Bullet riddled iron monsters

Lay frozen in their tracks

With telescopes and machine guns

Still sticking in their backs 

Unmarked - tomb stonesIn a military - cemetery

A mirage in a landThat once was ordinary 

Bleached, twisted tree trunks

With gnarled limbs reach to the sky

Uprooted from the land they loved

Where - burned alive, they died 

Reflections of Hiroshima

Are etched in these remains

Our legacy to the future

From a world gone insane 

I walk the shore where salty waves

Lick her festering wounds

And in the distance I can hear

The booms from Camp Lejeune

 With heavy heart, I watch my footprints

Quickly wash away

As the sun dips slowly in the west

To end another day

 I hang my weary head

Lost in visions of confusion

Trying hard to sort what is real

From - what's delusion

 And then - I see the bullet shell

Laying at my feet

The shell of ‘Oxymoron'

'We wage war in search of peace' 

I drop it in my pocket

As the earth beneath me shakes

And pray that in my lifetime

The DRAGON never wakes.  

 T his is a poem based on a true experience along a beach in North Carolina where the military practice war maneuvers before deploying to Iraq.