Walling in again…
I am in my bunker.
Searching for ammo
Kicking the rats in the scrotum
(Or what might be deemed scrotum if they had one…)
I smoke nervous cigarettes
(Cigarettes are always nervous
It’s in the nature)
My ammo is my excuse for a few more minutes of solitude.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Must be a couple of bombs over head rattling the earth above me.
It falls upon down a sick brown kind of desolate confetti.
The bombs burst like wombs upon no-man’s-land,
where many men live and die, and many nations too,
and many how centuries have bent and broken there?
Anyhow, I am sure someone is boiling a pot of communal tea
before battle. Someone is praying to Mary, someone to Melanie,
someone to a secret Derek.
I recall some guy saying to me:
‘The existence of the Universe was optional’
Who ticked the dam box? I wonder to myself…
Needing such a choice reconsidered now more than ever
But, my bunker is the entire universe right now…
Young, soft in the head, wandering about my mind
My mind trapped like a rat in a skull
Scratching my scrotum:
wondering if the General will notice my absence
You need a rude awakening Son!
He says with certainty.
Of course, he is right;
Though I won’t tell him that!
to acquiesce to put the hands up clear in the air and say
– it was me, i could not cope! It is hard to admit weakness.
I was foolish and untrained. I was laughing in the face
of responsibilities stone weight.
I wanted to become lost in the whirl of time.
I wanted to elude forever the great seriousness of age
and the great honour of war.
You couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag.
I was once told. Truth speaks through many passing voices, it’s true.
I had large sheepish brown boy eyes…and I would nod in agreement.
I could not fight my way out of a paper bag.
I am not much of a solider. The war fights itself. All wars are one war.
One perpetual human war: the flowers garland themselves.
The blood is overwrought. I am overwrought.
This whole thing reeks of the navel: a longing for the womb.
But anyway…I’m still soldiering…23, my rife like a snake from some mad taxidermist. My hands like great roots of some mind tree. But I am not much of a mind; I am infantry, infantile, infinite midst the decibels of shells! I’ll be gone in a quick mist.
I could murder a good woman right now. By that I mine, I could love one, I could fold myself into her, but I’m so bad at folding, I do it either to eagerly or not at all, I have all the hallmarks of a bad amateur with women: over confident, self-conscious, showy. But! I am too harsh. They are equally shaky immature flower openers of lust! They could be English, French, Italian, Japanese, but each one I would kiss, with ten times the lips! But enough! These women of love and ball squeeze and heart ache are a million bombs away…and a thousand realities from here.
The top Generals whisper voodoo into each others ears, conspiratorial, stroking some grandiose behemoth scheme, I we you them us our no nothing about. I am riddled with doubt. But it passes…till death do us part. Logistics/practicalities/numbers…from these there is no get away: This is a Commanders Holy Grail. There is no doubt. We soldiers are all part of some grand theatrical performance: one that we have not been asked about. I have only a bit part without lines. We don’t have much time to learn the steps, before we’re on. Bright Light….
Here I am. The rats are at ease. I am thin. My sabre glints its third eye. I am barely a man. But you should see me animal on the park. Trench wise feral and frantic…ready for some kind of destruction, some kind of Agamemnon, some kind of Troy, some kind of Somme, some kind of Las Vegas, some kind of Battlefield.
This is the place where tiny pawns: stand side by side: and explode one way or the other….who rush into the lions jaw…who pour into the fiery chasm of artless war…who rush like fireflies fire wise into the belly of Moloch, Ares, Madeleine, Medusa…who rush, rush hell bent toward the future….screaming like a choir of eunuchs….wailing through bestial throats the blood of Worlds pummelling…
I am Ready. I am Fierce. I am Possessed. I am Fire of Flesh. I am Skyscaper. I am Wall. I am Metal. I am Jaw.
My bullets shall kisses the blood and with that paint themselves and laugh with the shrieks of whores!!
GOD MAKES MEN MAD
BUT SOMETIMES
WAR MAKES MEN GODS
insane enough to return again and again…