Resurrection
A shell explodes in the shunned corner of a makeshift graveyard Concussed into darkness it rifts sterile clay Into silence that heaved and flowed through enduring epochs - Interposes fleeting fever of war Mortals to inter remains sunk shafts in its skin Depositing inclusions digested in patient agony To the source and destination of incarnation Elements dissolved Into this womb weeps formless protoplasm Oozed separate from the cold mass given birth An abscess sequestered from quiescent soil With agitation probes its confinement Drawn by witless impulse towards unseen light Doubtful protuberances manifest its desire To try the immensity grasping for the surface - Through inertia of imposing fate The effort collapses the space severed pseudopodia - Melt into the insensible tomb It barely squirms amidst all that is buried Corpses abandoned to Plutonian night - Where it flutters an uncertain pulse of anguish In tortured dreams risen Horrors of pain and of guilt It permeates the inorganic grain Transubstantiated towards the surface - Nascent limbs flail feebly against its entombment - With despairing breath smothered in earth Drowned and dissolved Dissipated into shadow Unremarked save the vague imprint of its torment Yet strangeness is irreducible with indomitable ambition - To bathe in vague reminiscence of life It ascends once more upon the struggle Suffering again pain of stirring and trauma of death Each instance a restored memory wherein to discover its essence
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
In the land of Tarturus The city of Ur lies besieged During artillery's lull a municipal façade collapses Imposing granite mimicking nearby mountains Affirmed the natural state unassailable as like immortal crags piercing the sky Beneath the veneer Pitted concrete with girding wires exposed the decadent folly Fallen with a startling crash! Witnesses respond mildly Content to forestall fresh bombardment A grand boulevard reaches forth Two paved leagues fitting six tanks abreast As when war's glorious penumbra Hot with nationalist fervour Paraded hardware of death Choked now with scorched chassis Vehicles sacrificed for tortuous alleys of guerrilla warfare Only decapitated trunks of ancient plane trees Trace the triumphant outline to a polluted river Its eddying water flashes black beneath portentous clouds Gathering gloom before the closing pincer
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
I spy him in the shadows Drawn by incriminating movement There's a tell-tale sheen off his brow His camouflage is feeble He's lost track of the sun and trails a betraying silhouette A breeze too removed to feel stirs the dust around him I adjust my aim through the rarefied space between us Distance grants serenity to murder without provoking I finger the trigger and in my imagination A puff of red from his slumped form confirms dispassionate kill But the chamber collapses without report Hollow echo of ordinance spent It rallies the enemy poured forth like rats from broken nests hidden among ruins They descend behind sharpened spades A screaming horde! Silenced by the shock of impact rolled through our ranks Spilling us on the melee Limbs pinned Heads offered for slaughter or drowned in the crush Either way we thrash for our lives! The din rises on despairing shrieks smothered in groans Dull intonations of butchered flesh bury all in cacophony Fallen like entombing earth Poured in bloody torrents Its anguished wail! Even the aggressor suffers Slipped on ground slick with gore Restlessly pushing to free his blade He lingers to exhaustion over each and every kill Intimate and protracted And finally succumbs in his turn So the heaving mass of carnage grows on either side Its dreadful weight subsiding admixed with clay A consuming quagmire swallowing whole battalions
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Official communiqué Supreme military command to political officers Of infantry battalion three six one The thirteenth guards division and citizen's militia Battlefield Ur For your eyes only Order six seven five: Stand to death! The industrial sector of Ur from the road D to the canal Extending east to the road K and west to the road A Is to be held at all cost Order six seven five: Stand to death! Order six seven five: Stand to death! All forward units are to hold their position until the last man Political officers liaise with reserve units to enforce order six seven five Order six seven five: Stand to death! Order six seven five: Stand to death! Soldiers caught surrendering their position face immediate Court-Martial Soldiers failing to engage the enemy face immediate Court-Martial Unaccounted units are suspected of desertion They will be sanctioned for their own dereliction - And for that of each colleague Sentence will be executed publicly - With suitable spectacle to impress a salutary example
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Their faces torment me Of dead men walking Personality evaporated in humiliation's glare Sun washed skin left grey Of veteran soldiers braced for martyrdom ended vilified Despised above the invader A brutalised deterrent Hold the line! The enemy ranges freely but we slaughter him in close quarters The better to inflict psychological trauma Repulsing his advance from our defensive stronghold And still they attack! Hold the line! To kill is unnatural To murder at close hand Drive the blade through a stranger's flesh Hamstring him Crush his skull It threatens your humanity! Hold the line! Now is the moment of glory Proof of honour Behind lurks the basement and decimated suburb beyond With neglected shelter in no man's land Hold! The enemy is buoyant He strafes our position with suppressing fire Thunderous bursts disintegrate cinder blocks Its bloody mist condensed on awestruck faces Hold fast! The darkness is forbidding Cloaked in disgrace The darkness is mysterious Offering escape The darkness is desertion of duty and from death Our orders to die! Hold! Looming in the shadows Expressions of dead men walking Mask like faces Not with patriotic zeal But pale with terror Poised for martyrdom Fuck the line!
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
A man will dutifully form up Patiently attentive to forestall fate In the trenches he was formidable Reckless to sell his life the dearest Bristling murderous instinct At the rout don't kill them all And never kill equitably Calculation unmans him His doom obscured by plausibly survivable moments Worked to exhaustion to outlast a comrade Enduring all privations like a useful slave Delusions of justice fasten fetters Struggling to mitigate your wrath Reward this and he grows haughty With reckless dreams of freedom Decimate him! Condemn at random! Decimate him! Arbitrarily slaughter! Not the victim but survivors to punish Strip from anxiety its right cause Not the victim but survivors to punish Strip from anxiety its right cause To heighten terror! To heighten terror! To heighten terror! To heighten terror! He will cease to think Avoiding its torment An accessory through survival Maddened with guilt Broken and domesticated Surrendered to shame To use unto death!
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Darkness absolute crushes my feeble form Pressed into its immensity Swallowed by it Who am I? A vague particular lost in universal ambivalence Destiny lies above I am drawn to it A violent gnawing of forgotten desire Frighteningly intense yet strangely compelling Poised between pain and lust Movement restrained by weight profound as death Paralysis complete Denudes the senses Even that ubiquitous presence Lurking ever under consciousness Instantiates volition and shapes perception The 'I' of selfhood wavers as if unborn I stir no heartbeat My scream into silence Deaf like the grave Utters not a single breath My delusions rupture Seized with the fury of inanimate indifference Yet death so terrible wears a familiar face! That of my boon companion in conspiracy and strife From whose dissimulating smile Glanced with naked avarice Pierces murderous pangs I am reborn in throes of death again and again forever!
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026