Fons Bellorum Poem by Larry Lynn

First Murder

The fruits of Cain on earth
proved fruitless as an offering:
Lord, this is the best from fields of corn.
Alas, dear Cain, thy gift is best forlorn.

Abel's precious lamb surpassed the chaff,
had cost him not just liberty but life,
or was it that their transverse wives
unequal in beauty stature, value, worth
caused one to live in shame
the other one with famous name
who clubbed his twin to death
or was it enviously with a knife?
Whether two stones slamming
sandwiched crushing brother's head
as Kabil did Habil, different scene instead.
No matter, Cain lives on and Abel's dead
while war and pestilence await ahead.

First Crusade

What William did for what disheveled lay
France left to open warfare, prey
fraternal families fighting, killing on demand
from each other, for parcels civil parts of land
with Papal blessings "Truce of God"conditions
Sunday - Wednesday days of warless peace,
exempting priests, monks, laborers, weaker
sex, as such, and merchants any day of any week
in Holy Lands reclaiming them
from the Moors and vicious Turks.

First Grade

The rock whizzed by my head because I ducked;
but, Charlie didn't.
He caught it square on his round temple
in-denting it like a new paragraph,
dropping him like the stone it was
simultaneous with his fall,
like man's instant, final, irrevocable descent from Eden.
He folded neatly in half, arms poised to support his dead weight;
but those massive pillars melted into pudding
spreading slowly into protoplasmic mud.
His brown irises both widened to capture fading light
as he dissolved into oblivion
unaware of what had zeroed in
on his locked-on temple.
He tuned out like dead air
unaware of his underwear soiled by the leakage,
remnant from that missile launched anonymously
from a friendly hand in a kid's game of
Let's Play War.
No one closed his eyes; he wasn't as dead to us
as he really was.

First Infantry

We trained to react first, another Charlie and I;
AK-47's pulled apart blindly, reassembled, loaded,
ready to fire twice, head and heart,
just to be sure.
Backpacks, mess sets, survival gear,
sixty pounds of daily needs
crammed into a uterine flex-sack
awaiting a possible renaissance
into a Brave New World
or a New World Order
balanced themselves gingerly on heaving shoulders
carrying the weight of wavering philosophies
of both Charlie and me
through political conflicts of interest,
through make-believe conflicts
with maximum effort to neutralize the enemy.

At boot, he bunked on top to watch my back
and I watched his. We trained for that;
we lived because of that.

First Contact

In the field we dug that trench together
not deep enough for a grave
but wide enough for two to pass back to back
even hunched over so helmets appeared like
turtles meandering aimlessly
until that sniper nipped it near the earhole
and flipped it with a two and half twist,
one and a half somersault.
.
The lead ricocheted into the mud
harmlessly buried like many
not so lucky GI's gone before.
Gus used his gun to deftly retrieve the helmet from its sticking point
as single volleys sought the dented relic of what should have been
splattered brains draining into some god's damned chalice of sacrifice.

Frenchie got him dead-eyed from the flash
scoped and scuttled dead fish drop from lofty perch
into flat layout spread-eagled backward portrait
with a nail hole where the heart might have been.
Gus weakly smiled as Frenchie sneered at his fallen prey.
This was old hat, dead target practice, no names, no dates,
no feeling at all.
Verified and noted for CNN News.

The ever pervasive dead blood odor
hung over us, clung to us
like the niter of Poe's Amontillado
where death was imperfect murder.

None of us wanted notoriety,
but back home we were the rope of tug-o-war
yanked into conflict, demanded back
where wives and children polled and pulled to no avail.
Nightly news - they listened for daily death counts,
widow's benefits, lonely nights, and cries from tomorrow's
single parent's voices, unspoken pleading from weeping child's eyes.
Mothers wrung with pride their wrinkled hands, wan smiles
that proudly hailed that rigid uniform
soaking in an open ditch
where ancient combatants armed with spears and shields
once absorbed the onslaught on command:
civil Greeks take civil life;
Romans versus barbarians;
social, political, religious, personal differences;
brother against brother - no answer to Why am I here
playing these children's games of war?
We recall the Combat! series, anything
to stay alive in defense of whatever it was they said.
They said anything to make us seem alive.

They lied.