Utopia - As a Soldier in the Trenches During WW2

Uncovering the crude pine caskets that now
Protrude from graves made in haste,
We see splintered wood and rusty nails
All scratched and warped with neglect.
The blanket of flowers, morning dew, and sunlight
Which most likely existed here long ago
Is gagged and suffocated with blood and soot,
Smothered by corpses and mechanical men.
Only coming out at night,
When the enemy is asleep and the triggers are on pause...
When the trenches sag with wariness
And tired souls cuddle with the mud...
We'll climb and scrape our way to the surface,
Lifting our chins to the moon howling silently,
With a prayer in our minds
To a God who merely smiles back,
And we realize again what we have become:
Toy soldiers in the hands of a disturbed, rotten child.

If only the blood could be stage paint
And the tanks only pretending to fire,
Then we could laugh in derision at the direst danger:
Being sucked up by mom's vacuum.
Instead we trip on dismembered legs
And a finger's been stuck in the rut of my boot for days.
I just got news that the rookie that had shared my bunk on base
Is headless and broken in the pit nextdoor.

It's the end of the world.
This must be the apocalypse, because I've never known such tribulation.
Apparently I missed the rapture.
That, or my mother was right
When she said I should be more godly
And quit dancing with the devil.
Here I stand watching humanity destroy itself
In gas masks behind artillery,
And can see no trees or streets,
Nor hear children's laugher...
Only ash and ruts in the mud exist for our viewing pleasure
As the air is heavy with the screams of bitter dying soldiers.

To you who may be reading this
In your warm home and padded bed
You have shown me fear,
Now I must teach you regret.
Look into your TV dinner
And sweep the dust beneath your Oriental rug.
Do you remember learning back in grade school that
Dust is 99% dead skin?
I spend my days and nights
(Which are impossible to distinguish between anymore)
Beneath the rug of war,
Which has corrected my faded education by showing me
That dust is not the only thing comprised primarily of death.
The lives of those who protect you
Are now comprised primarily of death as well.

I am here to tell you that you:
Live, sleep, sat,
Laugh, cry, scream,
Whisper, lie,
Dance, make love,
Bathe, and read the Bible...
All while wading around in a filling pool of decay.
Every move you make is covered in a film of death.
The life you live right now is parallel to the life you forced us into:
A decadent parade of particles rich with foreshadowing.

But enough about your mundane lives.
Let's get back to the juicy details which you are DYING
(no pun intended) to read and hear.
These foreign lands are rich in so many things.
There is mud as far as the eye can see.
There are intestines and guts galore.
These trenches which we call 'home' would be
The wet dream of every American landscaper and name on the organ lists.
The flashes and explosions, whizzing and whirring
Remind me of a twisted and perverted Fourth of July.
The only difference is that here
There are no hot dogs or baseball games.
Its really the 23rd of April.

I only know the date because of the tally marks I etch
Into supple, viscous wall of our beloved pit in the ground.
Each tick, tick, tick is comparable to
The red X's placed on each box in a calendar
By an inmate on death row, counting down to the moment
His brain is fried and scrambled.

Sometimes the waiting is the very worst part.

It's only a matter of time until the life is blown right out of me.
It could be taken from me by a carefully aimed bullet,
Or a skillfully thrusted bayonette.
Perhaps I'll cross the path of some wayward shrapnal,
Or catch an exotic and tragic disease.
I imagine that would be the worst way to go out here.
The creeping fingers of infection,
Stretching and grazing from face to face, lung to lung,
Throat to throat, stomach to stomach,
The war poisoning the blood pulsing through our arteries
Tying us down to the filthy water and feces
Littering our makeshift homes.

I think of you back on the Motherland...
You who sent us here to kill your enemies for you.
You laugh over Cuban cigars and tumblers of whisky,
With your maids cleaning your toilets
And your wives ready in bed.
You fiddle with your formalities,
Your custom tailored suits and sterling silver 'necessities,'
As we're doing your dirty work,
Playing God in the bowels of the Earth,
Taking lives and wasting the only power we have to create new life,
Looking at foul magazines from before we went off to war.
You old men play your poker
And fail to please your women,
Their eager wombs left hanging,
Their nipples hard and ready.

I hear there's been a rise in lesbianism
Since we men were shipped out.
I'm not surprised.
Ladies, when I'm done killing other mothers' little boys,
I'll be home to reward you for your patience
And tolerance of your lovers' less-than-stellar performances.

To my left three of my comrades are wounded,
With Their guts spilling forth and
Their Intestines winding into a demented sort of tapestry.
To my right, an over zealous rookie appears to be
Eager for suicide,
Eager to die a hero.

What can you possibly believe you are saving, young man?
You're only a number to your superiors here,
And will only be a name in the newspapers back home.
You will have nothing left to prove, except
For your exceptional stupidity and
A clue as to how you last voted.

I didn't vote, nor did I enlist.
I never said The Pledge of Allegiance in grade school,
Not out of a lack of patriotism,
But because in my heart I knew that my allegiance would
Only force me to lose everything I loved.
I worked to save for a fare to Australia,
Hearing that their continent is an entirely different world,
Overflowing with kangaroos and kind souls who would call me 'mate,'
And devoid of American dream that never really was my own.

If I serve my time and make it out alive,
I will spend the rest of my life searching for
The only dream I ever truly had.
It always was deceptively simple
And able to be summed up in one
Four-syllable word.

U-top-i-a.

While I know the only place it exists is in my mind,
What women say about men has proven true for me.
The satisfaction is in the chase.
Nothing else could have kept me going this long.

-Cassandra Chester