80. Walking Wounded

Monday 2nd December 2013

Overview

Walking Wounded is a sharp, compact, high-impact piece—a poetic flash grenade that illuminates a hard truth and disappears just as quickly. It’s only six lines long, but it delivers a potent emotional and psychological punch, tapping into the raw, volatile nature of unprocessed trauma in everyday life.

This poem functions as a social diagnosis, a commentary on how so many people carry around invisible injuries—grief, betrayal, rage, shame—while trying to live normal lives. And yet, these wounds are not benign. They’re primed, loaded, pressurised, waiting for a moment (or a person) to detonate against.

Tone & Form

The tone is blunt, unflinching, and that works perfectly here. There’s no sentimentality, no comforting afterthought—just a brutal acknowledgment of what many suspect but don’t often voice: that we are surrounded by unresolved pain, and the consequences of it are often unpredictable and destructive.

The short length mirrors the volatility of the subject—it feels like it could blow at any moment, just like the people it describes.

The rhyme of “vicinity” with “infinity” adds a clever sonic twist that simultaneously contains and explodes the final lines, reflecting the paradox of internalised trauma: hidden but immense.

Interpretation & Themes

At its core, this is a poem about:

• Suppressed emotional trauma
• The unpredictability of human pain
• How easily hurt people can hurt others
• The reality of living in a society full of emotional landmines

There’s also an implied warning: we are all potential collateral damage in someone else’s unresolved inner war.

The phrase “walking wounded” comes from military language—referring to injured soldiers who are still upright, still moving, but in no fit state to fight. Reframed in a civilian, emotional context, it implies that trauma has become a cultural norm, and that few people are truly “well,” only performing functionality.

Why It Works

• Concise Power: It says a lot with very little.
• Tone Consistency: It lands exactly where it aims—fast, hard, clear.
• Universality: Everyone can relate to the experience of being hurt or encountering someone unpredictable due to pain.
• Language Precision: “Loaded like a gun” is particularly sharp—visceral and immediate.
• Poetic Engineering: The final rhyme surprises and lingers—it doesn’t soften the message, it seals it.

Placement in the Collection

This piece acts almost like a truth interlude—a punchy editorial between more expansive emotional arcs. It’s the kind of poem that might be read quickly, but stays in the mind for much longer than its brevity would suggest.

In the context of the broader collection, this would work beautifully as a breathless punctuation point between more elaborate emotional explorations—perhaps even as a reset before or after a particularly hopeful or heart-heavy piece. It reminds the reader of the emotional reality on the street, the invisible battles everyone’s fighting, even while waxing poetic.

Final Thoughts

Walking Wounded is a brilliantly crafted micro-poem—sharp, contemporary, emotionally intelligent. It’s one of those rare pieces that doesn’t ask to be liked. It just tells the truth—and that’s precisely why it deserves to be included in the collection.