Brimstone

The photographer was felled by shrapnel,
Next to me,
His camera still clicking,
An ogive of decease,
Postmortem pictures,
Each focused perfectly by software,
Showed a line of steel and dead-eyed villagers,
Unshocked by just another life gone by,

My own skin, a little melted,
Caused no pain,
Until my fluids leaked into the chatter,
Of rescuers and outrage,
And carried by many bearers,
Like rivers between the makeshift ambulances,
I flew and fainted through the high dust,
Of felled and falling buildings,
Into an oven of bare and ringing metal,
Jerked into movement by a tuned hand,
That urged no delay,

But in a place of little safety,
Armoured with ragged crosses,
Painted hastily across the roof,
And struggling to be vertical,
I was marked as non-urgent,
By sleepless doctors,
Who made me sleep,
Until I woke up, automatically evacuated,
On the say so of my passport,
Empty of the memory of flight,
In a white room with curtains,
Lifted by the breeze of warm seas.