Young men—on the brink of 

legitimate adulthood—standing in a line.

Guns cocked, polished shoes planted

firmly on the German soil.

Make us proud sons.

Maintaining perfect stature like gods,

every little tyke wants to be like

the patriotic soldiers with their

menacingly-straight hair parts and their

timed, matching marches.

                                    War.

Broken men—innocence stripped from them

like skin gone after a date with a whip—

lined like cattle.

Suffocated by death, living ghosts of

what they used to be.

A gunshot fires. Many other follow suit.

Exploded skulls, ravished limbs.

Brain matter and robbed organs

embellish the German soil.

“Finally free!” a Jewish man wheezes before

kneeling to vomit scarlet and part from his soul.

Star-bearing bodies thrown and

piled like rotting, old meat.

                                    War.

A cardinal, dressed in a

deep blood-red cloak,

soaring low to the ancient ground.

Abyss-colored eyes scanning,

scouting for worms—

nutrition for her dependent children.

A clear, precise call travels from her

breast to her beak as she

locks in on her prey and dives

confidently toward the peeping head.

                                    Nature.

A hawk, gliding silently

above the red-winged mother,

flies slyly through the pinkish sky.

A slight smirk tugs at the

edges of his beak as her

backside is shredded in half and her

eyes are clenched in agony,

death replacing her cloak.

Feathers dropped for a child to find,

innards sprawled to feed the hungry,

maggots writhing in the fleshy remains,

scarlet babies left eroding in

a withered, forgotten nest.

                                    Nature.

Controlled by nature,

We are one.