Silk road

Along this silk road
travels a new kind of black death
A modern-day Reaper
dropping mankind's Hellfire
Burying dreams and body parts
in rust red dust

Helmand, Khandahar, Kabul;
you know the names
seen the rubble and the dirt
the wailing women tearing rags
'Only bad witches are ugly'

Scorched earth is hard to dig
and the sand just keeps falling
but there can be no open coffin tonight

Along this silk road
poppies grow, set seed
a scattering of precious poison
worth killing for, dying for
Neither red nor remembered these poppies
rather green, blue, forgotten

Note:
Reaper - a remote control aircraft
Hellfire - the weapons dropped by a Reaper
Scorched earth - a military strategy of destroying anything
that may be useful to the enemy, i.e food, transport, people.