Jw Nugent | + Follow Poet |
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Attack

ATTACK

I can still see their faces
mouths open screaming silent screams
silenced by the loud barking 
of weapons, theirs and ours;
sudden explosions rendering moot
intensity of automatic fire.

They came out of the trees
running across the stream,
the dark forms bending grass,
their feet splashing water;
such detail of uniforms,
wrinkles and straps,
water spraying from their passage.

The trees behind posed an almost
pastoral backdrop of night shadows
cast in the warm glow of collective detonations;
Then the silence, sudden silence,
ears overwhelmed by cruel technology,
the breathless suffocation of adrenaline.

Darkness grew as senses dimmed,
the brightness of action fading;
there were bodies in the grass, 
lying still in the water,
under my muzzle, within touch.

So natural in their motionless state
rather than fading into darkness,
the bodies, no longer men glowed 
illuminated by the floodlights
of hate, fear, and remorse.

Hand stretching to my muzzle,
poised just mere inches away,
while I kept pulling the trigger
on a now dead weapon;
willing the rounds to fire
needing them for survival.

I died but still breathed
as a fickle moon glanced
and showed its dismissive light;
there was nothing but death,
the dead, ours, theirs, scattered
natural in their motionless state.

As I looked, my friend,
lay against the embankment,
he unknowingly met my glance,
while light faded from his eyes;
his blue eyes kept watching
and his face calmly smiled.

The moon fluttered then gone,
rain came in whispering,
my sense of loss overwhelming;
alone now I could only grieve
their death and that of the living.

Ever so gently the Monsoon
whispers its condolence;
the gentle fall of water
cleansing my brutality
forgiving me my hate.
Gradually darkening my vision
night regained control.

Copyright © Jw Nugent | Year Posted 2018

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