Rememberance Day

Maggots chew and suck through rotting flesh,
that soup sublime, as all is slow reduced in ordered time,
and deliquescent dance dictates, reduction,
as  Death, takes charge, determined and imagined;
sensual and seductive, grasping shredding hands,
to lead the lost through mysteries and mud,
where rivers mark the edge of unknown lands.

Such is the law and course of conflict through the years,
where bodies break upon the back of fear and rage,
and youth is squandered in the name of greed and hate,
that others may hold power or be enriched;
while horsemen ride in riotous, prancing gait,
to wave the flag apocalypse once more, and roar
in voices brittle and confused - destruction waits.

And yet how poorly memory has served their sacrifice,
how little have the stories brought real change,
how meaningless the moments and the shrivelled words,
the poems and flags and tributes endless heard;
with war and death still stalking through the world,
blood, grief, pain and suffering, never to be checked,
in hideous mock; the battle flags stay full unfurled.