Hemorrhagic Earth
There’s a howling in the near distance that expects my return. If only it could wait. My ears sting and ring and this place is a blur of barbed wire and pus. Every callus lends entry to a new memory of trench-work. I walk towards the muffled agonous groans to find a man whose blistered soles were too gargantuan to trudge through the sludge. All there is to do is set free the river inside this mountainous protrusion. I grab the nearest pointed object – a stone – and warn him to close his eyes and brace for what’s to come. With the pointed jag of the rock I press gently on his sores, and slice. The river runs freely. I am standing in a pool of my peers’ near-gelatinous yellow filth, basking in what I made new again.
A moments rest; the deadness of a sonically empty war zone. Soft, rotted wood; the finest pillow a tired trench worker could beg for. I am blissful and oblivious. As breath slows, the ominous lull of “no man’s land” is both soothing, and frightening. It’s nap time in this lacerated claustrophobic death row.
I’m awake and silence still assaults my senses. Nothing as much as the smell though. As much as I drown in it, it leaves me doubled over in position ready to vomit every time I realize it anew. The flow of tainted water rife speckled with decay and excrement is less than pleasing to the olfactory. There are currently two corpses in my sight staring back at me with leaking, violent eyes. The scene itself would purge in a mirror. I need a mirror…
The embodiment of all sickening events has just hemorrhaged in this earthly crevice.
The feeling of love is absent in my battered mind save for the love of one trench-sharing friend of mine. His name is Timothy. And in this time of war that is a most friendly name. Musical and soft, a friendly name.
“Help!!” someone shouts.
I walk towards these words as if there’s not a dire urgency in my mind. Desensitized to all things sensitive.
“He’s shot.”
“Who?” I shout.
“Tim!”
Tim. Timothy. My last connection to real world connections. I increase my walking speed to a painful, foot burning run. As fast as I can through rot and riot. I arrive and the image is like a slowed fall onto hard gravel. Not only the image of a dying human; this image is of my dying humanity.
I kiss his head. He mumbles.
I kiss his head. He stares.
Leaking, violent eyes.
I kiss his head. He stares.
I kiss his head, and I cry.
There’s a howling in the near distance that expects my return. If only it could wait. My ears sting and ring and this place is a blur of barbed wire and pus. Every callus lends entry to a new memory of trench-work. I walk towards the muffled agonous groans to find a man whose blistered soles were too gargantuan to trudge through the sludge. All there is to do is set free the river inside this mountainous protrusion. I grab the nearest pointed object – a stone – and warn him to close his eyes and brace for what’s to come. With the pointed jag of the rock I press gently on his sores, and slice. The river runs freely. I am standing in a pool of my peers’ near-gelatinous yellow filth, basking in what I made new again.
A moments rest; the deadness of a sonically empty war zone. Soft, rotted wood; the finest pillow a tired trench worker could beg for. I am blissful and oblivious. As breath slows, the ominous lull of “no man’s land” is both soothing, and frightening. It’s nap time in this lacerated claustrophobic death row.
I’m awake and silence still assaults my senses. Nothing as much as the smell though. As much as I drown in it, it leaves me doubled over in position ready to vomit every time I realize it anew. The flow of tainted water rife speckled with decay and excrement is less than pleasing to the olfactory. There are currently two corpses in my sight staring back at me with leaking, violent eyes. The scene itself would purge in a mirror. I need a mirror…
The embodiment of all sickening events has just hemorrhaged in this earthly crevice.
The feeling of love is absent in my battered mind save for the love of one trench-sharing friend of mine. His name is Timothy. And in this time of war that is a most friendly name. Musical and soft, a friendly name.
“Help!!” someone shouts.
I walk towards these words as if there’s not a dire urgency in my mind. Desensitized to all things sensitive.
“He’s shot.”
“Who?” I shout.
“Tim!”
Tim. Timothy. My last connection to real world connections. I increase my walking speed to a painful, foot burning run. As fast as I can through rot and riot. I arrive and the image is like a slowed fall onto hard gravel. Not only the image of a dying human; this image is of my dying humanity.
I kiss his head. He mumbles.
I kiss his head. He stares.
Leaking, violent eyes.
I kiss his head. He stares.
I kiss his head, and I cry.