Image credits: Eddie Lawrence

How many boys who loved playing army,
Who loved pretending to be shot
tumbling down summer hills,
Who loved pretending to be dead
as their bestfriend checked to make sure,
Or who loved pretending to deliver
their last-words soliloquy
wincing in imagined pain
or lost and dreamy,
Find themselves years later
trapped on the battlefield
Hearing the voices of enemy soldiers
Searching for corpses to mutilate
or wounded to torture to death?

What man remembers those idyllic
boyhood days then
As he lies still as possible
Trying not even to breathe,
hoping beyond hope
the enemy will pass him by,
Knowing if he's discovered
they'll cut off his cock and balls
and stuff them in his screaming mouth.
And then, before cutting off his head,
disembowel him before his eyes?

Ah, thousands of boys and men
have met this end,
Millions perhaps by now,
so many people
so many wars.
Do they go to a special heaven
set aside for
all who die like this?
Restored to the bodies they had,
The memory erased of that insane end
to the story of their lives?

Do they still get a chance
to play army with joy
And pretend to be shot
and pretend to die
After they meet this end?
Do they still get to thrill
in pretending to be dead
after they die?
After this hideous inhuman end
will they laugh and wrestle
their bestfriend again?