Intermission

War Torn (part 2)

He awoke with a start
Fear gripped at his thumping heart.
It was a dream.
Thank God.
It was just another dream.

For a second he had thought
he was there again.
Back there in that ditch.
In that trench.

That stinking trench;
That reeking trench;
That seeped with
the raw stench
of primal fear.

He rose and walked to the bathroom;
Stood before the mirror over the sink.
It was no longer the same reflection, he saw
When he'd gazed into the same mirror before

Before.

No longer was he the same man,
Carefree and so much in love.
All the world stretching out before him.

For him.

A wave of revulsion crashed in his mind,
As the visions flooded his sanity.

Outside a bird chirped in the trees.

It was the bird song, the sound that had triggered his dream
The sound carried him through space and time; back again.
To the ditch that had been his sanctity.
So close
To the enemy line he had lain.

While the battle raged; he
Hid in the reeds, camouflaged
Like a snake in the grass
He heard the sound of
The sickening ripping
As metal thumped against skin.
Time over time, over time again.
He smelled the vileness of shit
Mixed with blood, as the rain
denseified, curdled up and intensified,
the stench, till it hooked and decayed in his throat.

And there he stayed, till the
only noise that remained
Was the groans
of the ones who  survived,
wounded and maimed.

Still he lay, exhausted, ashamed.

Till the birdsong cut through the afternoon sky.

He rose from the dirt, alive and unhurt.
As the sound crept under his skin.

And he felt that now familiar rush
Of repugnance rising up to smother him.