Boethius’ Ghost

Believer in Truth through rigorous logic and honest reasoning. | ✝️ Christian | 🇺🇸 U.S. Veteran | Husband | Father

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@price_dominie Fresh manure for the nog presses I see.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@Dianexis Crispy crowns smash up both the hash brown and tater tot category and take the win.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@Bow_B4_BJJ Push when they pull and pull when they push.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@pnwguerrilla brother…. Your turn around time is absolutely epic! Thank you so much, woobie and poncho in hand just a couple short days after ordering. Looking forward to the next purchase.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@syskusa @Rebels_Raiders I’ve been over here jonesing for his next drop and hoping like hell he hands out pre-order links to us or at least a few of us, LOL. I check his site almost daily, paranoid as hell that he will restock, I’ll miss it and what I need is gone.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@CultLaser @Christoph8711 Order placed! They look great 👍

[EM Burlingame - 蒲 奕 言 @EMBurlingame]

Only Part Way Home |
by: E.M. Burlingame

The fire’s down to coals.
I let it go.

This room held more voices once.
Now it holds me
and the wind at the eaves,
worrying the gaps like it knows what’s missing.

The bottle gave out on Tuesday. I think.
I don’t remember if it gave out on me or I gave out on it.

Some nights I talk to the worrying wind.
Mostly, the wind has the good sense to stay quiet.

Four decades answered to the call.
What came back through that door
was what was left of a boy
and the rest of something replaced what never made it back.
The rest of him still out there.
Scattered along roads that don’t run all the way here to the town I left.
The town I left that kept its roads but changed them anyway.
While the people it kept never did.
Thing is. A boy leaves like that,
he only ever gets to come part way back.
Well, the town moved on without the pieces I lost.
Honestly, so did I.

I let friendships go — some to the ground in the town cemetery,
the rest to the years I was gone and the not knowing what to say anymore.
Meant to write. Meant to call.
Meant to get back
before the leaving set up hard as concrete.
Before they and I both became versions the other didn’t recognize.

The table shrank. Chair by chair.
Now it's just me and a coffee cup with a chip in the rim
my thumb still finds every morning.

My folks live close, just down the street.
School friends from the old days less than a few miles beyond.
Sometimes, I drive past their houses, look, and keep driving.

The remainers quit waiting on a man who kept saying: tomorrow.
Tomorrow came.
Too many of them didn’t get to see it.
Now only the dark answers when I say their names —
the ones in the ground and the ones still breathing who wouldn’t know what to do with what’s left of me.
Old memories of old visits won’t go. The houses I pass are still lit.

I let good women turn away
while I was still learning what a man owes the ones who stay.
I gave them the road. The next fight.
And the silence a man brings home when he’s looked death in the eye
too many times to flinch.
Their doors closed soft as snowfall.
I called it clean at the time. Fool.
Pretty line. Don’t matter. Snow melts. And so do I.

The call never asked me to lose them.
I did that all on my own.

I ran hot because heat kept me alive when nothing else would
as the work broke me worse than dying.
Said words I can’t call back.
Slammed doors that don’t un-slam.
Left the old men’s wisdom on the shelf
gathering dust I never wiped away
while I chased what I figured mattered more.
They died before I learned the questions worth asking.
Guess that's just how aging men come wise.

Wisdom didn’t come cheap. Didn’t come quick
to the boy who answered before he could count the cost —
and the cost didn’t itemize.
It just kept compounding and taking.

I stood for what was right —
till right cost more blood than one man’s got.
Then I kept standing.
For causes already turning to ash before I got there.
For men already becoming ghosts.
I poured my fire in anyway
just to leave behind more ash.

I spent myself like exhaustion was the proof I needed.
All it proved was I couldn’t tell a hill worth dying on
from one that would just bury me in the end.

I never refused the call. That was the problem.
Even when nothing answered back.
I went anyway and kept going after the mistake was obvious.

And still I won’t disown the whole of it.
I was one man. Rough hands, hard head and heart,
with whatever soul made it through the smoke.
I walked the road I drew and I won’t curse the deeds that did the hammering.
This man was forged in the same blasts that burned him.
That’s not pride. That’s just the maths.

But if the wheel came around once more —
some old god, some trick of the fates
offering one more turn for this fragile spark I carry —
I’d take it without asking the price.
Not to call the women back.
Not to unsay the temper.
Not to win what was lost to time and dishonesty.
Not even to unmake the leaving.

Only to stand one more time in front of friends
whose names still move this aged man
like they might still answer
and say the goodbye that never made it out of my chest.
Look them in the eye, living or leaving,
and give them what the between years stole:
You mattered. I should’ve said it while you could still hear.
Clasp the hands I let go last, long ago,
to feel them close around mine again
in friendship, before letting the end do what it must.
Maybe then, I’d come home a little more whole
than the part way this town and I allow each other.

Every man who answered comes home wrong.
Some just come home worse than others.
I was one of the worse ones.

That’s the only mercy I’d ask of the years.
Leave the road. Leave the scars.
Leave the fire low and the ache that never quits aching.
Leave the boy at the door with his bag still packed.
He’d off again before the question finished.
We both know it.

All of it stays where it landed —
except the words I carried too long and too late.
Words not said to those long gone.
The only things still haunting.
I’d spin the wheel no matter the cost, with what’s left of these hands
to say those very words alone.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@CultLaser I would have opted for “trap crabs,” 🦀 in the Navy, catching crabs has a whole other meaning 😂

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@CWBroesamle looking at you good sir 🤣

[Havoc 2-1 @HavocTwoOne]

What?

Is this not how you packed for your honeymoon?

[Harvey's Pistol & Pawn @harveyspistols]

"In the war to impose global Zimbabwe, we are all Rhodesians, now"

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@_SILLYGOOSE_ofl Awful 😢

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@6Voodoo I just finished Blood Memory. Outstanding…. Hope there’s a follow on!

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@skoonrB @TommyFaceOnFire Are the battle lines the same as last year?? Don’t tell the noggers but we’ve set up and L shaped ambush near the chicken coops with claymores in the nesting boxes to prevent collection of eggs. Cider artillery support is on standby sir 🫡

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@TripleATactical Man that actually looks like it would work in my high desert environment.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@pnwguerrilla I did, and you better ship fast.🤣 Yeah, not a huge purchase, but still military surplus man, I expect my poncho and wooby most Ricky Tick.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@FenixAmmunition This person has no concept of what it would mean to be hunted.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@CultLaser Thanks Cult. You’ve always been a standup person and I have enjoyed doing business with you even for my small dollar amounts. I appreciate it, but it’s an easy fix on my end. Pay that goodwill forward. Regardless, you’ve earned my loyalty.

[Boethius’ Ghost @BoethiusGhost]

@skoonrB @Headshok1962

[Warrior Aspie @warrioraspie]

GM all! This is your reminder that the entire Stop The Bleed® training video is free on YouTube for anyone to watch. Link at the end. Grab some buddies and sit down and watch it. Pause, talk, practice at home, and get everyone a little safer than they were before you started.
https://t.co/YzesCeTBq8