1917 - Spring Offensive (Dulce Et Decorum Est)

Plodding on through the sucking grey mud

The carnage fought, oozed by trench war clay

That in springs past sprung not a single bud

For fear of more death or total dismay

Though shells may plow clean the fields

Burning the crops and mauling the mud

The wind brings only death from a vat

Fertile by cold blood a young man yields

Innocent yet mangled in gruesome combat

Spewing blackest bile the gas claims one more

Cold death comes creeping through the trench

If not by shells maimed or crazied long before

A cloud of mustard takes half of those deployed

Ghastly faces peer back in black or hues of grey

The grandiose arrogance, victory as agony intent

Lifeless by the commanders that them did betray

The mindrape of the spectacle of dehumanization

Viral god wields his festering scythe of gangrene

By endless flashes of mortar or the cadaveric stench

Ghostly faces peer through the veil of celluloid

"Creeping like a snake from a can

The slithering stench of yellow death

Chemical flame of decay

Burning skin and intestine

Regurgitating the bloody guts

Spewing last life from a wretched soul

Live for life, kill for all that is wrong

he drags himself to safety"

Death in the Perimeter

Where furious endearment once was cradled,

crippled by crossfire, but firm of will

Live for life, kill for all that is wrong

he drags himself to safety,

Death in the Perimeter

The need to bleed to gain a yard of mud

Plodding on through the sucking grey mud

The carnage fought, oozed by trench war clay

That in springs past sprung not a single bud

For fear of more death or total dismay

Burning holes in his battered back

Eyes and mind leaning on the fair horizon

but his heart drowning in trench war clay

Fertile by cold blood a young man yields

Shredded by barbed wire

screaming shrapnel, incandescent hail