It Shakes

It shakes us hard these days, the lack of danger,
Our time defined by blur and tedium,
               directionless and lacking war,
Safe and finely fed,
               we eat ourselves,
Turning snarling on our own quarters,
               As the cause of all that fails,
It kicks the children into fade and fits,
Now that we have our ideals fixed,
Now that we have crushed all these ills
               with logic.


There is no muddy trench to make us men,
No whistles sounded three times
               to pour us over wire,
into the screaming hail of shells
               and other metal,
We’re in a ragged hole now,
               becoming European,
Slowly mixing with the Earth
               of France and England.
Turning to interred flesh not marked
               By ritual,
Save for letters in a grimy pile
               meant for home,
Forgotten on our Captain’s desk.


The rubber has perished
               on the masks they carried,
Decomposed to dust and scraps,
               in every attic,
Lost in the ragged, glassy lagging,
The synthetic wool that scours
               a thousand cuts-per-second,
Over my skin, and not drilled at Sloping Arms,
               I drop my rifle,
Its clattering, a bomb
               dropped in the silence,
A butterfly to start a war,
               As houses fall in sequence,
Dropping like my ancestors,
               into the mud of Asia.