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CHAPTER 1

The Ferryman


What's it like to have a war Right there at your door I'm not sure That I can bring this to your shore Across The ocean of experience That separates us You from me This sea That stretches out To infinity It runs red With the blood Of all the dead That i have walked over Crawled across Trampled on And buried It's scary To even contemplate Even telling you

Even describing to you How the few Of us Who Survived Dealt with the remains We're all insane To one degree or another But at least We have each other To tell our stories to And be understood But you'll never get it No matter How hard I try No matter How hard I cry About all the arms and legs And bodies like broken eggs Shattered My mind is battered Just thinking about it I mean I have executed men In cold blood Put them to death While you sat around Smoking crystal meth

Or watching your tv Waiting for the world to be What you want We are caught In a dichotomy of worlds And the river of sorrow That separates us This river of death This river of loss Can never be crossed No matter what I say Or how much I pay The ferryman


It's Just A Dream

It's just a dream But it seems So real The feel Of the rifle in my hands The bands Of fear Strapped around my chest It's a test Of my psyche This nightmare That wakes me From all the dead It's all in my head It's just a dream But it seems So real The feel Of the blood on my hands The hot demands Of the wounded

Crying out I shout In my sleep It's just a dream But it seems So real I feel The screams Cut through me Like it was yesterday Like it was last night Like it just happened My last firefight And I'm still Covered in blood Lying in the mud With my rifle in my hands With my ammunition At my side Waiting for the tide To turn Waiting for the circle To be complete Waiting For my last heartbeat It's just a dream But it seems So real

And I feel My sweat soaked sheets Tied up around me As I bend myself Around this nightmare It's just a dream But it seems So real And I feel So wrong With my muddy bloody hands Held so fiercely on my rifle And I can't let go Even though I know It's just a dream But many times It was real


Every Night

Me I watch a war Every night in my mind With my memory so unkind I see the bombs and blood I see the children die And I see the mothers cry And I don't wonder why I return here To this nocturnal melee Ten thousand years of history Have led me to this place Where The despondency and despair Are haunting lessons That no one's learned From all the death That's been earned From all the fights Battled thru the nights From dusk to daylight

There are the screams That wander thru my dreams The wounded Crying for their life Amidst All the surrounding strife They howl and wail For some relief With some belief That someone will save them

Those of us who survived Were all revived By the silence of the guns The violence That's been done Appears slowly With the rising sun The bodies spread like eggshells A thousand private hells Displayed in the growing glare A revelation Of devastation Upon a field once fair To behold In the early morning dawn We all yawn With tiredness The bone deep fatigue

Of the sleep deprived But we all strive With adrenalin activated agility The ability to continue And finish all the work Which none of us may shirk

This is how it starts We pick up all the parts While others dig a hole Our goal Is to bury all the bodies But how gaudy Is it To collect The pictures, weapons, pants and shirts The rings and other things That we take Are enough to make Even the hardest heart to break The naked bodies Go in the holes And with our limbs and souls All pained and hurt We cover them with dirt And walk away

Yet I stay Every night In this milieu Asking what's my due?
What will I eventually pay For having participated In this direly dedicated Destruction The coin of my induction Is that I will always watch a war Every night in my mind Sometimes I wonder If I'll ever find Peace Peace?
A little piece of me Will always be buried In that place It's what I face Every night And when I've thought I've left those things behind Another war will start Every night in my mind


A Letter to Wanda

Dear Wanda As I sit here In this muddy hole My memory Takes its' toll It's all I have To keep my mind bent Beyond the immediate Environment I think of you In order to Take my mind Away To stay Sane I need an anchor Something That will keep me From the battle that will come From the earsplitting hum Of machine gun fire

Going to and fro And so I think of you There's nothing else That I can do I've checked the weapons I've checked the ammunition I've checked our position Our condition Is all good So while we wait I think of you It's true I have other women Nancy in Nanaimo Hanna in Halifax But I am halfway Across the world And facing My mortality Placing In my mind All my past When I cast My remembrance Out like this At this moment Facing fate

I know That it's too late For you and I But still I think of you All I can do Is remember what was Because In the next few hours Amongst the showers Of mortar shells And rushing gunmen Some of them children Perhaps I will not survive My lapse In judgement In our relationship Is my regret And I cannot forget Here at the end And so Wanda I think of you


Around Us

Motion churns Around us Violence burns Around us As the bullets fly Around us And the children cry Around us The mortars land Around us Our brothers scream Around us Death reigns Around us But we carry on Around us And they carry on Around us We fire Around us Killing them

Around us Just as they kill us And so it is That war is thus And it will not stop Until we stop it Around us


Fear

I want you to imagine Bullets flying past you Hearing them sing Their whining whimsical song Passing through the air Parting your hair They're so close To hitting you What do you do When you feel them go by I can't lie And say I felt no fear Because I lived it I was scared to shit Fear was a state Of being But the alternative Was fleeing From what we were seeing In front of us

And that I could not do I would rather die Than be accused Of being a coward Of not having the balls To fight For something I thought was right


Dawn (Morning is Broken)

The sky is blue and beautiful When dawn breaks After battle But every living heart aches As the light reveals The bloody broken ground The bodies to be found Between us and the treeline There's no sound Just a vacuum Of stunned silence After all the machinegunned violence That raged throughout the dark The scene is staged For sunrise For illumination And no disguise Can cover up The slaughter That surrounds us All the dead

The end of all the lives they led Are left on this field In front of us We're bereft Because So many of our own have died On this field for which we vied And created this carnage That is so casually Unveiled to our sight In the early morning light


Eclipsed

I killed someone today And when I saw His broken Shattered body Lying on the ground I found No satisfaction My reaction Was remorse For him For his family For his wife And children He gave life I didn't hate him Or have anything Against him But I was told To shoot him He was the enemy Did he want

Anything different from me?
I'll never know Because now He's a corpse And the secrets He may have told Are gone And dawn Will not Enlighten me I will forever be Eclipsed


The Mother

The echoes of her screams Still ring in my ears And I can hear In my dreams That ululating voice Emanating pain With no choice But to evacuate All her grief In this sudden rush of sound She's downed She's on her knees In the dirt And her hurt Hits me like a wall She calls out to god With her tortured soul And a hole Opens up inside of me I will never be free From the horror

Of her discovery Her child Her six year old son Lying in the mud With his blood Pooled around his face There is no grace In this world Of war and wantonness There is only this The death of innocence And the agony Of a mother's memory


Anguish

Anguish escapes With immensity And intensity Pouring forth In a vocal volcano The pressure of the pain Is unleashed In a torrent of sound Like a dam that breaks And overflows In an overwhelming scream It seems As though The resonating sorrow Cuts through All who hear it To be near it When it discharges The despondency and despair Of the one afflicted Is also to be inflicted

With all the fatal feelings Of the one distraught To be caught In the oral agony That deadly sonorous sea Of sadness And grief Is but a brief Reminder To us all An exposition Of the thinness Of our skin


The Commander

A hard man With a hard job I've never seen him flinch In the face of danger No stranger To death is he But in misery He walks about No smile ever on his face And never One thing out of place His hat His hair His uniform And rifle One look from him Will stifle Any humour There's a rumour That goes around That he has

Put in the ground A thousand men Children He once had And a wife Who gave them life Now all gone They were lost They were tossed Into this war And taken Who knows how Or in what kind Of circumstance By chance The commander He survives He thrives On his hatred Of his enemies At every turn His concern Is to defend us So he tends us Like a flock of sheep He doesn't sleep He patrols Night and day

He controls Everything In every way Not a heartbeat Happens here Of which he's not aware His care Comes casually Almost callously With disdain But his pain Is obvious For those of us Who choose to see A man obsessed With the memory Of the family He once possessed


AK 47

The AK 47
Mikhail Kalishnikov's invention Is an assault rifle Meant To kill men Created For close combat And for those of us Who have done that It's the most reliable weapon In the world It's curled
30 round magazine Will never jam And it's easy to load And because of its' shape You'll never be confused Which way it goes Even in the dark It's not accurate very far But its' bullets

Will go through a car And hit someone hiding On the other side It can't be denied That the walls of a building Are no defense Against this machine Fired at close range It's not strange That something so Deadly and devastating Has been devised By a humanity So despised By each other


Rifle Maintenance

Clips and buttons Triggers and springs All the little Mechanical things That make a rifle work Are so important When your life Depends on it Which is why We are constantly Frantically Frenetically Taking them apart And putting them Back together again With a bit of oil Through the barrel To ensure The projectile Will not jam We do this

So many times We can do it blind In the dark So that we won't Miss our mark When the time comes To kill someone Who wants To kill us


Threnody

Perimeter mines Announce the advance Of our enemies We don't know them And they Don't know us But on this night We will fight To the death No shot of crystal meth Or line of cocaine Will alter the brain In the way That incoming fire Will charge the synapses Momentary lapses Will get you killed Or worse Your buddy beside you Or the one behind To be kind

We say That death is random While we try to fathom Why him?
Why not me?
But we We don't see The pointlessness What we see Is an enemy Killers That must be Put down A burst of sound From a mortar shell Illuminates This hell Where we will survive Or not Ringing ears And smoke stung tears Isolate us We are each On our own All our deaths Will be alone Tomorrow With our sorrow

The crows will come And the hum Of flies And the ravens' cries Will compose A dirge for the dead A lamentation A threnody For what has occurred For what both The dead and the living Have endured


Charlie

When I arrived Charlie Gave me A flack jacket We had to backpack it
200 miles With only A change of clothes And a weapon And ammunition And nutrition In the form Of American army rations The fashions In the jungle Might not extend Beyond shorts And a t-shirt But if you're gonna fight A flack jacket might Be a good idea

And Charlie gave me one Not quite done He taught me to fight And many nights We fought side by side The tide Of battle Finally turned Against us And Charlie Standing in my place Took a bullet In the face This strife Took his life Standing where I should be And me I just ruthlessly Carried on fighting But my ammunition Ran out And when an enemy fell in To our position I beat him to death With my rifle With my breath In a panic I was manic

And struck out blind In the morning I would find What I had done The commander came by And asked me why I was still huddled there I didn't care About the other guy But about Charlie And the fact That I had smashed His head in In the melee In the dark When I couldn't see And the commander said
"They're both dead.

Let's go have breakfast."


Mercy Killing

I saw the flash Of the RPG Leave the trees It was directed Directly At our position Supposition Would be That it hit us But it passed Right over us And hit the hut Of the woman We were defending No questions pending I ran back To rummage Through the remains Hoping to find That someone survived And I did

The baby lived But the woman And her four other kids Were all done in The sin Of this murder Was already Being avenged By the time I realized That the RPG team Was compromised By my brothers in arms They had caught them And held them down Machetes came out And without a doubt The death of 1000 cuts began And as I ran To follow them They started with their feet It wasn't complete When I got there But it had gone Far enough for me I was horrified My disgust Could not be denied

And I knew these guys Were the living dead So I shot them Both In the head By definition This rendition Is a war crime But to me At the time It was not vengeance It was not execution It was mercy killing


The Medic

Today Is just like Any other day But I don't Feel that way I feel the loss I feel the cost Of the wars I've fought I'm definitely not Overwhelmed by this I actually miss The combat Because it was important For the people we defended And the wounded that I mended Acting as a medic In my mind The flares still shine On the bodies With the glare Reflecting from fresh blood

Incoming fire Flashes my desire To help those downed Screaming for their lives Each of us strives To do our best And this was a test That pushed me To my limits And I feel I failed My brothers in arms wailed While I tried to reach them To try to save them But I couldn't Not because I wouldn't I did I never hid From enemy fire I shot them as I ran I made a stand To save my brothers And others died As my brothers cried With wounds from bullets And shrapnel What the hell Are we doing here I was so near

But couldn't reach them In time So we covered them With lime The next morning And my mourning Will never cease I will never be at peace


Lifeblood

In my memory Red hot blood Floods Over my hands As I try To staunch the flow Gushing And rushing From what's left Of my buddy's leg Blown off By a mortar shell His left leg Is almost gone Right up to the hip And I dip My fingers Into the remaining part Trying to find The artery That's severed

I will never Forget the panic That overcame me While his life Flowed Over my hands And I remember The look in his eye That said Don't even try And with the slightest shake Of his head He was gone He was dead And I sat there Drenched In his lifeblood My mind Totally wrenched With guilt And grief My belief In any kind Of higher power Gone Taken away Stolen In that moment

When he died I could have cried In that moment But I didn't I screamed


My Rifle

I had a rifle Put in my hands And I was told How to use it I had a rifle Put in my hands And I was told
"Don't lose it"
I had a rifle Put in my hands And I was told When the time comes You'll know What to do with it And sure as shit The time came And I knew What to do I counted rounds That I fired I never tired

Of switching magazines With my buddy Beside me Trading and taking turns At firing One night us two We went through
14 boxes Of ammunition Perdition Damnation And ruination Wait for us Because that night In that fight We counted Forty men That we killed If I was to build A monument For the men who died By my hand It couldn't be grand Enough To console myself

For them Or their families But it wasn't me That killed them It was my rifle


Camouflage

I see my face All in camouflage Too late I contemplate What I'm doing Why I'm here Who is this person?
This reflection in front of me This guerilla That I see?
There's an emptiness In those eyes That no amount of paint Will disguise There's a hardness And a resignation I don't need imagination To understand these things The image brings About the knowledge That this is

A commercially contrived war But what we struggle for Is simply survival For a handful Of simple people Who only want To live their lives in peace To watch their children grow And see the seeds they sow All come to maturity Instead We witness While They're all mown down Trampled to the ground I ask the mirror For a reason For a rationale Something Anything That might explain This insane Combat that we fight Foresight Should have warned me But I didn't realize And now I don't recognize

The person I've become The camouflage is permanent And I hide Inside of it From all the horror From all the stench From all the blood That flowed I'm not owed anything And I have paid In my own way For my participation There's no disgrace In the colours on my face But even when I'm all washed clean Those colours Can still be seen

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Excerpted from "Third World War"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Dave Rankin.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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