I, in a dungeon, consumed upon the gloaming;
I, beneath the knell, the soul’s cascading
Across the long, insensate, and inexorable
Night. An enshrouding of wraithlike lambs,
Unwept the crimson sigh, parapets imploding,
As the chilling raven’s cry shattered tombs
On blackened pall. The fires of Fallujah, the
Encroaching rat-a-tat-tat of fire from the rebels,
Intoxicating was the haze that groaned on
Gelid ground. The bellowing of the sergeant,
Through lucid bells of ravenous war. The captain,
With terrified and translucent eyes, frantically
Attempting to put his spleen back inside his body,
No garlanded damsels, no West Point parade
To comfort and console. The corporal, crawling
In agony towards the Humvee, with both feet
Destroyed, two ghastly trails duly painted by
The Archfiend, sanguine streams that wept
Unto the ancient shroud – and then the RPG –
Whereon I held a lifeless hand. Staring at
Another whiskey in a Tartarean cavern, gone
Rhododendron sighs, the milk-white veil bathed
Incarnadine. The primordial maelstrom, whereon
The best were lost: Ronny when he jumped
Into the raging of the Yukon, submerged by the
Blinding white; Berkhart, subsumed beneath a sea
Of oxycodone, floundering upon the waves for one
Last time; Hap, unable to restrain the uncaged beast,
To a barroom brawl was downed, felled beneath
Canarsie, a showering of blood sprayed on heartless
Walls. The Iraqi girl raped by remorseless fiends in
Rawah, stars and stripes on every arm, their laughter
Luciferian, vanquished eyes beneath the cross – her
Screams never– sounds that burn into the
Brain. Trapped beneath the final causeway, guns that
Rent the dying suns, an adamantine train lost unto the
Windswept morrow – hemorrhaging were the moons
Where every ghost doth call. Perdition’s road where
Ghouls engorge on swirling sands, Cyclops prowling
Where flickering flowers grow; an evanescing of
Undrawn dreams, dreams that drowned wraiths that
Once were men. The harrowing chasm, hunted souls
Without sight; a brutal stampede of ruthless armies bereft
Of light – the mind’s unraveling – a cataclysm without dawn