Dogfaces

Now the past means nothing. It does not exist.

For a body trained to react without question,

A body renunciant, submissive to fate.

Now there is nothing but day-to-day detail,

Instructors’ incantations, catechism of fear.

Accept your death as simple and correct.


Black rain. Drenched to the slimy root bone.

Everything soiled in the glutinous morass.

Reek of flesh and dung. Vegetable putrescence.

Foxholes full of slop and dusk all hours.

The jungle thinks evil every second,

Concocting infection, fever and death.


Weary automata, -scared shitless,-dig, dig, dig.

Benumbed in every fibre, they curse and pray,

Pray and curse. Blistered, bombarded, shaken

Apart. Up to the line the veterans sleepwalk,

Indifferent as workers through factory gates.

Their world is superstition and random doom.


Bone-brittling terror. Twitching sinews and minds.

Clenched guts. Clamped jaws. No mouth, just void.

The entire world a rising nausea, a maddened pulse.

Idiots, idiots, why do you return from the dead?

You should sleep and find some ease, some love,

Under the ground, beyond misery and disgrace.