I cant lift you
You are too heavy-
..and anyway you’re hurting
..and have asked that I stop,
 in last breath.
Your pain immense
I put you down
I am an anvil
but I am not invincible
Yet I thought I could save you
pulled at open ribs
injuries too severe
Pieces of shrapnel
caused blood streams from your ear
Running into soil
Underground entrenched
and I saw minature rivers, red on black
In desperation screaming the profanites
pleading out your name
the frightened tears streaked
my dusted cherry cheeks
and
I tugged and I dragged at you
ape like
the baulk of you
thumped on the hulk of you
It never worked, heart stopped
and in trench
did rat skulk oblivious
patient with incisors
cursed those ambassadors
Of the inevitable
they survived the shelling
And the shrapnel
Whilst my friends fall.
the foriegn silence seemed innapropiate
as a hundred guns stopped to reload
so
I picked for one last time at you
my own sweat fell on your
half frozen smile,
already dead.
butcher meat but everything
a person, a soul gone
evaporate
but not for me to know
for hope is a poppy soap
opera-
this the killing field.
My hands bloodied and soiled
The field hospital bombed
And the grenadiers called
For reinforcements
told me to fall in.
I took the spade for you
Dug a pit for you
Took a tag from you
Stuck a fag on lips
Put your photograph,
hip flask,
On folded arms,
In the hope,
that those upon a waking, 3 foot under,
Soil
may spark up
with lucifer, bring the devils drink to lips,
dreaming
My rope for you
Never saved, the threadbare knots
gave way to
loyal
devotion
life’s little simple things
thru fire and shells
kept us going
the craven A’s and bells
I took your kit bag,
for we needed that
Then covered your face
The rats had began to Que.
I never saw an albatross
for sky too shot to shoe
any vulture
and enemy did I loathe
carved through once pretty groves
Of garden
splintered.