In Passing

The black boots looked fine on him still,

Pristine and shining in the flare's illumination

As it lit the degradation of everything else.

Mud and blood that covered all, torn skin and worn fatigues

Arranged strangely over his diminished form.

One finger rested on a rusting trigger guard

As shards of others lay on the ground around him.

Rats moved in his interior, making the best of wasted flesh;

The sound of their frenzy in his exposed chest

Almost worse than the cry and hue

Of the familiar insanity and death that lay around them.

A whistle blew and weary lives gathered for a rise;

For the discharge of a duty, of bullets and breath,

Without cause but with lies and hope in its charge.

Black boots lifted and bodies shifted then from the earth,

Men treading on metal and bone, crushing photos

Thrown by some scavenger to curl by this corpse;

Moments from a lifeforce past, images fouled and stained.

The world of this man left framed in fragments of monochrome,

Defamed by a sunken face and his resting place

But with yellow teeth instead set in defiant grin;

For smiling wasn't permitted in the glorious dead.