I don’t want your little war;
I have my own to fight.
Still you battle on, but man, what for?
There’s no end for you in sight.
You make up reasons for the blood to pour;
I just want to pull the tourniquet tight,
And cling to the symbols on my uniform
As I wait and watch my waning might.
Tourniquet
Published
Writer In Retrospect 
Make sure not to pull it too tightly or you might lose a limb.
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Ahh, fair point, and nice keeping with the metaphor.
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What I take form you writing, Rachel, is that it’s all about motivations. Some people spar over principles, and return to their embrace when war ravages, and after.
Others, though, seem to live for the conflict and the violence, and continue to press on long after forgetting why this all started in the first place.
It applies to vexations much less extreme than are war and peace, too. In everyday life, some people just like confrontation. They love to argue and to be disagreeable. Meanwhile, the rest of us massage the temples, rub the eyes and moan, “Why are we fighting, again? I’m just…so…tired.”
Look at me, huh, trying to tell the poet what’s going on in her own mind?
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I applaud your attempts at reading my mind. 😄 After all, seeing as how I so rarely write in prose, someone has to try translating the one to the other. And you are, more often than not, fairly accurate… And on any occasion where you might be less so, your interpretation is typically such a great improvement over what I had in mind while writing, that I actually prefer it, though I may still point out where my thinking differed, for the sake of honesty.
In this case, though, “motivations” is pretty on the nose. Ah, the differing philosophies that get us into such trouble with each other…
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