We Might Get Well Tomorrow - A Series Of Poems

Meat Shield

The forged weapons are trying their best but even they know I'm dead weight. There's no room for my transparent armour on the sunrise-stricken battlefield, populated only by dying blades and clinging life.

A generous selection of whispering daggers begging to be clutched close to my chest, and yet I can't bring myself to stain a single one of them. My trembling, shining legs bend outwards towards the barrage of bullets, no outstretched swords to stop me.

My fingers would only fumble around the softened handles and pollute each knife individually. Hands are all I'm worthy of to fend off the deepest rivalries to life and dragged existence.

Drowned face bathed in blackness, empty arms raised straight to the sky, sunken eyes finally switched shut, I surround my lungs with gambled fate.

I always needed a shield, but I never treated them well enough. Fight after fight just to bruise the intricate patterns and discard them for another day until they're needed again. A glorified support dog, speechless in the face of my selfish pain. The shield breaks little by little in futile attempt to hold back my piloted skin.

Dazzle me before the bleeding bushes, below the moonlight, and above fallen dreams, it makes no difference. I'll remain still engulfed in blades of grass before I infect all my blades of metal with my wasted fingerprints.

Not a single worthy person left on territory to claim my blood. Everyone else is made to watch me struggle in a glorious one-man-war. A glorious gone. A race to The Great Beyond - or The Great Nothing.

The guns beg me to use them to my sunken heart's content, ignorant of the fact that content is beyond reach of the yard. The pink officer would never permit it. The helmets beg me to get well tomorrow, but it would have to be alone, willingly defenceless, in the face of the merciless elements of the outside. The blades beg me not to lose the war, but I couldn't promise a single thing.

I'll blink a little longer, plunge deeper into the field, stretch my arms further, parade my legs a little faster, chant a little softer, grunt a little louder, bleed a little easier, cut a little more, hurt a lot more, fight a little weaker.

And then one valiant night-