“Right and Wrong” |

by N. Jed Todd

I did it all the wrong way,
Fucked it up and good.
Enlisted when I had to,
Fought because I could.
You did it so much better,
You got it down just pat.
Success, women, and career,
You’re living nice and fat.
But just because I did it wrong,
That don’t make you right.

Scars on my arms, hole in my head,
Hide my eyes when I gotta shave.
Sometimes I wonder if I was dead,
Would that make you somehow safe?
But we’ll answer again on our last day,
And I wonder what you’ll say.
I fought and bled and killed for what …
What you never knew.
I may have done things wrong,
But that don’t make you right.

So keep your school and job and home,
I’ll take my life well-wrecked.
Burdened by what might not have been mine,
But I did it, while He wept.
It wasn’t easy, if sometimes fun,
And I can’t say it ended well.
But here I stand at the End of Days,
And you can join me there in Hell.
I may have lived my life all wrong,
But that don’t make you right.

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N. Jed Todd is a Texas refugee, TAMSter, retired US Army Psychological Operations Master Sergeant, and a Russian linguist. Also a civil servant until recently, working for the Air Force on tech modernization and information warfare. But since the greatest information weapon is hope, he’s turned to poetry and fiction for solace (published in As You Were and in several Middle West poetry collections), and to his family, his daughter Meera and wife Ami.

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