The Iraqi Cantos~ I. Death From Above (Death By Unanticipated Technologic Regression) Poem by Aaron Graham

Adaptation, survival, ROE, COC: abstractions;
Mean nothing.
Mean what your perception finds In them.
So, mean nothing.
Unless,
3k from Al Qi’am,
Find your advancement, steps behind
A wicked shaped charge,
Desperation takes shape.
A Stielgranate 24
Blood crusted, formerly-digi-cami-swath-
Lanced at each corner
By strands of hand-span-long-scrap.
Constantia wire, blasting fuse
A bloodied dog-tag-chain,
Braided shreds of still smouldering American flags;
All duct-taped to the handle.
Which, once a handrail, rested
In a, formerly two-story, home.
All but forgotten midst ruins of what,
Till 27hrs prior,
Resembled A Fallujah city block,
Now canted away from its mark at an acute angle.
That is, presuming center was the mark,
Waiting for the suspended, macabre, parachute
To gracefully ease the blood-coated-charge
ever nearer the instant of my destruction.

Despite the stark reality
Impending annihilation would seem to pose,
It was the abstract
That clenched my mind.
It’s lock-jawed malevolence preventing
(or perhaps prolonging) death’s ordeal.
Meaningless.
Useless.
I Found myself in my crumbling,
Dilapidated theater of memory.
Knowing the level of revolt critics portrayed,
And out of morose, Morbid, masochistic, curiosity
Unable to look away.
Sheer agony.