War As Historical Allegory To The Unfettered Dead

It wasn't supposed to be like that
where they educated him
with dull charts and gaping graphs
inferring superiority of the know
when the experience felt
like three seconds of alarm
and thirty minutes of pain
as the rifle bullet
had cross-stitched his messenger bag
and the sargeant
threw out blood smeared communiques
that looked like desperate love letters
written by a retard
to survive all of war's lessons
like the distance of Sarin
and the dicotomy of bombings
versus blast radius
that never measured a single goddamn geometry
except for human cruelty
locked in a purple vase
and kept empty except for blood red roses
swimming in earnest
in the houses that refused to fool their young sons.