Blood On The Snow Poem by Ben No

Blood on the snow;
the falling white, like icy spikes.
The sky is low;
so oppressive it feels like
it's resting on
my scalp. Such a dull shade of
slate, that hopeless
grey of gunmetal and doubt.
And just beneath,
all that crimson spilt on white.
The contrast slashes at my eyes
like a blade. I mean, it's
like, at some other time, such
contrast just might
manage to be pretty. But
not now, not here.

I stare at him. Just moments
ago, there was
a man beside me, yawning,
telling me how
he missed his hometown and his
girl. Not now.
Now there's just a shell. A hole
in the world, where
once, seconds ago, a soul
resided. And
I'm gawping at this sight, hair
and flesh and bone, suddenly
in all the wrong
places, and as his blood spreads
it sinks into
the snow, as if the cold ground
beneath, somehow,
is hungry for it. And sound
bludgeons its way into my
head abruptly,
the scream and piercing whine
of bullets and
explosions and howls of fine
men now become
lost children, wailing for their
mothers, as they
clutch at bleeding stumps, or
guts trying to
escape into the open
air. And still I
cannot move, all sense of self
preservation
gone, because I'm transfixed by
this awful sight;
this vision from a nightmare.
Just red on white.
Everything is wrong. I stare.
The snow still falls,
the bullets still fly, and still
I cannot move.
The air is crammed, edge to edge,
with the smell of death and cordite.
Any
moment now, I could be hit myself. Just one
more empty shell
to add to the pile. And still
I cannot move.
Not even my frozen lips,
to say goodbye.