Waiting for the power
Need to charge my phone
Before I take the 6k hike
To my uncle’s country home
My parents and my sister live there now
After our apartment was bombed
By Russian so-called liberators
In the first weeks of the war
I’m on 3-week Army leave
Nice for Christmas time
Heading back tomorrow
Happy New Year from front lines
I almost had a girlfriend
Before the start of war
But before I could seal the deal
She fled to Poland with her mom
She should have talked to me first
Before she made the split
She must have known how I felt
Guess she wasn’t there yet
Just as well, I reckon
War’s no time for loving
People dying right and left
A crazy kind of living
Fighting times are brutal times
In trenches south of Bakhmut
Artillery duels, reconnaissance tools
Snipers poised to kill
Three weeks rest, but still on my mind
My unit deploys back in four days
One last feast with family and friends
Then back to mud and blood and haze
The lights come on, electricity back
I stand up, light a cigarette and think
While I’m waiting for the phone to charge
Might as well get a drink
There’s a beer house up the street two blocks
With a waitress I wish I was gropin’
Might as well go and bid her farewell
It never hurts for hopin’
I walk the blacked-out streets of my city
Battered but humming with life
Russian bastards think they can break us
We’ll teach them the meaning of fight
I walk past my friend Mikhail’s house
Bomb damaged and littered with trash
We dreamed of traveling around the world
But he was blown up in the north of Donbas
I should be thankful, and yes, I am
I know I am so lucky
Still, I hope someday to return
To first year at university
Waipahu Bob 