Every night is edited with the random punctuation
of exploding mortar rounds
And it takes a while to learn to sleep
And realize...
You'll never hear the one that gets you.

Death by daylight, too
Bright and Dour

Sniper shots like the bell
of an angry clock tower- tick, tick, tock
Load and Lock, Load and Lock
Harmless terror...
Most of the time
Death is a comic with wet, sticky, lines
Hilarity handpicked by sanity
over surrender of the wits
With Macho laughter throughout all of it.

Helicopter rotors tear through the air
Deisel tank engines and Radio chatter,
ands rats in the hanger up under a chair.
Heavy Metal Music compounding the clatter.

But worse, far worse
Than the noises of War
Are those moments of silence
Where a primal Beast lives
The cordite cloud where destruction dances
and reverberates

The reverse of screaming, re-lived and re-lived
...and re-lived
The reverse of screaming, the muteness of dread.

Far worse, Far worse...the sound of the dead