Camouflage dreams

Friends and common men
on the battlefield
of rumble and mortar and sand.
We stand, on lines, with no morale.
What did the green camouflage see
beyond the 'welcome' and the bullets that fly
ricochetting off cement walls and bursting eardrums?
In the shelter of paradise between beach and aviator glasses
leaving their souls in someone else's hands
and their scarves on mouth and nose
to avoid dust and the religious virus lingering
in the eastern air.
It is where western atheist lines are crossed between drinking coffee
with gun
and dyslexia.
What was a red cap's diary supposed to hold
beside misspellings and drenchings in others blood?
We march to the ship,
we wade through the tide,
we stand together, you and I.
Gun to face, screaming to stop a tear,
mother said "Men do not cry."
and when you, my tanned little boy,
who I did not know since birth,
whose mother I made strip down her Jewish clothes
and bathe before us to keep the guard strong,
you, my tanned little boy
shot down in friendly fire,
my friendly fire.
The friendly words
of propaganda.
Friends and common men
on the battlefield of rumble and mortar and sand.
We stand, on lines, with no morale
marked and buried beneath the poppies
with mustaches that rot from our faces
and six weeks our faces rot from our flesh,
our only resurrection in my reflection,
another boy's camouflage dream.