The silence is ringing so loudly in my ears, everything’s much closer bigger larger than life, a life that cracks like an egg on the rim of a hot pan, and bleeds pure raw fear.
Heat from the fires nearly burns my face, and the smell of cordite diesel and something else fills my lungs.
Acrid,
All my fingers still on and toe’s still there.
This must be it now Endex, surely this wasn’t part of the plan. He’s been messed up,
Smashed like a human puzzle,
Will his mum still recognise him now? Remember him now? Love him now?
Shaking with fear of what may come, and numbness of present reality.
Acrid all my fingers still on and toe’s still there.
If death was a lottery my chances stand good to be a winner it seems,
Where the jackpot is an all inclusive one way trip to nothingness.
This is not how I thought it would be, not a scratch on his face, helmet still on.
The sun still blazes defiantly and relentlessly under a scowling sky, witness to the seething throbbing horizon of dust,
Acrid all my fingers still on and toe’s still there.
Don’t know which parts to hold together, or if there’s a point. Green and orange tongues of hells fury lick and lap, swirling in twisted directions.
Nobody’s walking away from this anymore, it’s not just a drill and the ego is melted in the sand, along with the cold black stares of the brave and willing,
Acrid all my fingers still on and toe’s still there.
I want to be away from here, far away from these
Black towers of lung sapping nauseous destruction.
Back in school ignoring the teachers and bunking off,
Or with some girl, making bone plans while sharing fish and chips on the promenade in Blackpool. This isn’t a film, you can’t just pause it while you go and brew up, or decide not to watch
. Acrid, all my fingers still on and toe’s still there.
I feel helpless, like my chute didn’t open at 3000 feet, just waiting for it to be over. Why can’t it be like before? When everything seemed like a breeze, but we sold those times for a handful of naïve dreams.
Now it’s the real deal, not a breeze but a gale a howling deep black tornado without mercy and without remorse,
Sucking at the very core of our existence, stripping away life itself.
All that’s left is a crime scene with nauseous evidence of panic fear and that new smell, two thousand degrees of skin bone and hot rusting steel, where black perimeters shroud charred stills of an inhumane humanity. In my dreams still acrid, all my fingers still on and toe’s still there, but his still lie somewhere out here in the scorched dirt.