Alchemisland

Car fires in my front and rearviews

I test my mettle on mayhem, few 

Survivors and fewer thriving

The barely alive scarcely dive to avoid my fire

They’re jaded, war tired, shell shocked and utterly cooked

I’m doing a funny walk like Peter Cooke from Crecy to Berlin

Slim legs raised, nothing even grazing, absolutely amazing

Merlin how I ride the dragon’s breath, inhaling mustard gas

Taking a taste to further brace me, really embracing the brave ancients

In my war approach, I catch a bullet between forefinger and thumb

Like I was making an old luas ticket into a roach, I thought the war was fun

Everytime I fire my gun I bag a Hun, cat couldn’t be swung without kill counter upping

Gutted him with a gutshot now he’s mouthing like a guppy in German for his mummy

I plum him with my rifle butt, plunge my muddy boots into his rusty guts, fart musk

Did the next one like a practice dummy, took my rum then run at him

Impaled on my bayonet, honed to a razor edge

Selvedge of lifetime realise no salvation this time

I recline my wrist, discharging his ichor onto the duckboards

I don’t stay to enjoy the gore but that’s another to my high score

I seem to change form like I was endorsed by a warp spasm

I am the god of battle, a thousand-axed battering ram

Life incurs a cost, I am its tax; I am fire-breathed Miraxes

Flames for days, extra petrol in the canteen, rifles clean

Discharges every time, courage under fire

I took the entire stock of Victoria Crosses

I’m the stronger arm of the armed forces

They unleash me when every other course is exhausted

Resources must be next to naught when I’m deployed

The guys in power abhor me, my lack of comportment

My shabby uniform, my lack of adherence to form

I am a thing deformed, without hope of being reborn

I’ll never be reformed but on the battlefield I perform

I weather the storm and become it

I cry havoc, and am its hounds

I outbound the charging cavalry in Pict armour

Nothing save painted spirals and primal courage

Nothing discourages me in my forward march

Discharging my firearm as I climb over wire arches

I stop to check my watch, always exactly on target

Blasted tree I mark it, last of three I spark it

Forward rolling like it was dark souls across no man’s land

Rolling grenades into foxholes, half horses lopped foals

Like Bosch growths, alien moulds, shell holes

In which likely lads meet cold graves, with no grace

For every red poppy I’m lopping off an ear, copying

Universal Soldier, I’m the best soldier in the universe

Never went to university, never once in three tours needed the nurse

Djinn dressed as a nun in my nursery succoured me, nipples bleeding

Unleash my pistol into someone’s face, teething pains.