A deep black chasm opens in the ground,
I listen for gunfire but hear not a sound,
The battlefield is silent, the shock waves
echo silently over bodies blown to hell.
Young soldiers, barely out of nappies,
lie seeping their life blood into the
uncaring earth.

The tanks trundle down the streets
bereft of women’s talk and children’s
chatter.
Only stentorian orders and feeble cries
of pain vie with each other to be heard
over the rumble of caterpillar treads.

A country’s young are sacrificing
themselves on the alter of a nations
pride. Senseless, horrifying deaths
made even more futile by the stream
of new young blood bravely marching
to take their place.

I see a face at a burnt out window.
before I have a chance to fire it’s gone,
and in it’s place a death mask comes,
a living nightmare that one can’t
escape from, ever.

The high, shrill whistle of a sniper’s
bullet passes my ear, I fall to the
ground and bury my face in the cold
dark earth.
Behind me in the shadows a young man
prays, his prayers floating upwards in
a cloud of smoke and rifle fire.

Is God listening I wonder, up there
in his peaceful haven? Does it give
him pleasure watching nations
locked in battle?

The drone of a fighter plane livens
up the sky, the sharp eyed pilot sees
life in the street and scatters bullets
down it’s length, three, four, five, fall
to the ground, faces grimacing in the sun.

The war is over now, for them. In this
small corner of the war three hundred
souls are winging their way heavenward
today. And this scene will repeat itself,
every day for eternity, oftimes in my mind
and oftimes in the mind of the enemy soldier
over there.

Bombs, bullets, blood and acres of broken
bodies, some ours some yours.
Who did win this war? Them? or Us?