Untitled No. 1

It started with words in a bar on a late winter's evening By the first flush of spring, sides were chosen And lines were drawn The red summer sun set on fields of banners waving And the autumn leaves fell like bodies From the battlements We dug in, played to win, for we knew Our cause was righteous It did not matter that we knew not what it was For the radio said that the lives of our wives and babies Were under attack by vampires and aliens In the mud, we suffered the frost and the cannon fire As generals fed on the breast of the war machine Commanding us to die for their gilded pleasures While maggots ate all of our rations clean A thought like a thread sent out From beneath the Atlantic Carried news of the fast-approaching enemy line As my lips drank deep the blood of a terrible monster I recognized two dead eyes and a face like mine We broke ranks, smoked and drank In the heart of an unholy city Traded chocolate with children Hid Vermeers beneath our coats Made love to the whores on the steps of the Tower of Babel And woke with steely blades pressed to our throats A thousand years in a cage, we thought ourselves forgotten Prisoners of something we did not understand When word finally came that the fighting all was over Though we could return, we could not go home again