Agent Death - A monologue

Please don’t choke upon my sin’s glory

The blood upon the ground is reminder enough.

“The war was not mine.”

As you had said...

I indeed chose to go and fight.

Chose to spill life upon ancient stones

Burying soon forgotten memories

Along with broken and splintered bones.

Those unlucky enough to have lived

Weep still at their shattered dreams

Of hope lost and loved one’s now dead.

“Why?” You had asked in pleading with me not to go.

“No reason.” I’d conceded

I was angry at everyone, the world

And wanted to kill or die trying.

I was quickly schooled in the education of irony

As the body count rose...

It was those who’d been forced into this infernal hell

That would lose their lives, in many vile ways.

While those of us who had made the choice to come...

Survived.

Only to be given medals of honor

And other such drivel. Little did they understand.

For those few others like myself

This was not about awards or trinkets.

It was about a grim finality..

Death had always been a specter towards life.

We simply were the kind to charge in and face it.

Rather than let fear consume our minds

Leaving us as unstable mental vegetables,

In some forgotten back room hospital bed.

If anything... in the end.

Mass graves and fields of coffins

Had become my trophies.

For it was the dead who’d fallen while standing true

That I’d come to respect.

The entire menagerie had ceased to be about life.

It was now about death. Perhaps it always was.

That good death..

The one that never came.

The one that made me hate the world even more.