Jerusalem, the Jugular -1
You can't imagine what it's like to march on a sacred city,
to plunder and pulverize a Peoples' physical promise to a Deity,
demolishing centuries of lavish labor,
wasting offspring of ancient heredity,
destroying flesh, scripture and stone
with a savage Roman military synergy,
a discipline determined in it's destruction of dissension
inspired by ancestral victory,
politics was not our purview,
methodical punishment was our specialty,
We were War's royalty,
we were Legio XV Apollonaris
monsters of Mars, messengers of Apollo,
the juggernaut of Jupiter,
along with 11 other legions led by General Titus
60,000 cuts of glory we stood,
for 3 and a half years we fought through the Jewish guerilla ambush
asymmetrical urban warfare welting our progress
like a pirate pestilence,
district after district, hell spell after hell spell we bled with chilled maneuver,
the Zealots were pyromaniacs, burnt sacrificers
their zeal and our bodies zesty wood,
in the Kidron Valley they flooded the streets ankle high with oiled water
as the Cohorts waded through the lanes leery
a torch was tossed,
flames rose in a rush,
240 men perished like spazing stars trapped in a box,
our grief agape with horrified crush,
as reprimand, Titus made the Legate sit in a tent
with his chopped off ring finger
smoldering like hot sand in the hand of a marooned man
aware of error in his ill plan,
the insurgents had men we called fox tails,
desperate demons who knew how Hell began,
as a skirmish succumbed to our skill and number
they would run into apartments
dragging the fury of our blades into rooms of Hades revenge,
these were fire entrapments,
the buildings would blaze like windowed volcanos
screams salting us with panic linger,
J.A.B.
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