A God Of Battle Speaks Poem by Andrew McEwan

Watch.
As I make men dance,
At the touch of a trigger
I can throw their bodies,
Into positions untried.
I scythe them open.
My juddering, incessant hammering, paints
the ground with the blood of innocents.
I spatter across no-man’s land
Zipping and zinging, my messengers
Set the barbed wire tinkling.
And the strong men screaming,
Their wives?
Silenced. Only I can equal the reaper for my deeds.
I’ve stopped advances, attacks
Fall before my flickering, flaming muzzle
Never to rise,
As I have decreed it.
Watch, as my prey flounders into shell holes.
They won’t be long there, I tell you
now, And
He slid back down into the shell hole,
Half his face gone, Left eye staring
in mild surprise.
The ground glistened with a wet, dark red.