Gospels of War


Chapter One
Undisciplined, illiterate boys
were scooped and poured
into the meshing grind
and out the end of the machine
cast iron soldiers
fell and filled the bins,
and by the case were
wrapped and shipped
off to the welcome furnace.
And then and there
we thought we saved ourselves
from some gnashing,
snakehead evil
or from the unknown fate of those
who play the unknown pacifistic card of faith
then risk hand of an unknown God;
or had avoided our own man-to-man,
sweat-to-sweat and God-to-God
fight-to-the-death by
bayonet, bullet, hand.

Chapter Two
As I ran from the bombed hospital,
another something happened and
all they ever found of me
was my left foot
inside my boot
and then and there my fellow patriots
lost themselves.
Loading their blind weapons with
consumptive, blazing vengeance,
the infection spread
to slaughter the
heart and souls of entire nations,
unaware
the wrong ones were being killed
and killing.

Chapter Three
After the bombing,
through the fallen dustscape,
stubborn smoke of burning dirt,
he found face of a crying baby,
still held in her headless mother's arms
and then and there
he lost his world.
With time,
he began to understand
this grotesque art of human will
serves catalyst to
redemptive revelation as
he found himself to be that child
gripped in his headless Savior's clutch.

Based on first hand testimonies of eyewitnesses to
World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor.