Grovelling bodies, a shell of their former selves
Stilts trembling, fists clenched, blundering through echoing mist.
Until on the screaming zest we pass our interest,
Then toward our far away rest we curse.

We continue – prisoners of our own device,
Onward, through ebbing lights and rattling sirens
Gas shells dive, plummeting to the ground below
Like an acrid autumn leaf

I saw him drown
I saw his body fall as he was swept into a grasping tide,
I saw his face melt as his guttering lungs plunged for their final breaths,
I saw his white eyes hook on my itching face.

If you could watch the froth bubbling form his acid stuck face,
If you could hear the thickening blood writhing in this poisoned veins,
You would not see war in such a high manner,
You would not see war in as the obscene stereotype believed,

Because he, he was a man floundering in a fiery sea,
And war, war is not the high held glory it is thought to be.