Conscript Of Death

Galleys pour upon the shore,

As a roaring rushing wave

Spills bodies armed for death,

While flashing fires herald gore.

The paltry soldier cuts through the caves

Of the night-sea,

Now stained with gauze and odor.

Maniacal cogs inside him creak,

His plate mail panoply turns to air.

(all he knows is death, death, death

And nothing of despair.)

From hazy firmaments arrows descend,

And rack those too sane to live.

Braced in steel cavalries rend,

Roaring as men blankly survive.

Canons wail the land,

Men lie staring, blazed.

Death's parting blow breaks the hands

On the splitting decks; bodies, all-crazed

Splash from the light, sobbing as the fires

Shear their peach-pink flesh.

Graves at them rush in a viscid red tide

And sink the ships

While vainly captains thresh.

The soldier smiles, for in this deliverance,

He knows freedom greets all who fall.

Moving to a mail-laden dance,

He kills again and again in liberty's thrall.