Here I stand the victor, the skulls before me lay
Upon a pile stretching back to the haze in the distance.
Speckled with blood, and marred in mire,
Faces so long and proud in death preserved
Such that nothing may break their gaze.
I fear them — those whom I thought I’d conquered,
Looking so deep into my soul, and I weep
Knowing that they will never know the way the world has turned.
I turn my back to them, and much to my dismay
A field of bodies lay strewn among the corn.
Stalks of maize, shadowed in haze, a fog before a storm.
The stench of death and decay, what may be is not theirs to know.
The fog rolled and roiled upon the plain of death, so dim and dreary.
Shrouding the scene with whispers, mixed with the cool condensation of breath
From the living.
We, the survivors, victors all,
Pray we’ll rebuild after the fall.
This is America, in the 21st Century.
This is America, so hard and heavy.
Blood and grit, wailing waifs,
Here we stand victors awaiting our place
In history.
And what will they write
About us, who led by slaughter and tumultuous fight?
Here we stand, the victors.
But we feel not glory nor honor —
Only the faint echoes of our kin thus slaughtered
In a red-eyed rage, torn asunder by bullets cast
And at last they are at rest… But in our thoughts
They linger and last a hundred years.
A marker of the past.
A warning for those who have yet come to pass.
A reminder of folly, fury, and hubris.
Swung like a gladius, shot like a bullet,
A hail of lead put them in the grass.
What shall our children make of this mess?