Fallujah

Fallujah



Part 1.  Thunder Over Fallujah

Ten thousand souls in a state of anxiety,
Offer prayers with solemn piety.
‘Eve of battle, the giant stirs;
To strike out in the darkness at the snarling curs.
His hands in the desert will do the deed,
The men take their orders from the absent who lead
From one mind to the many, the nerve is the link;
And through it they’re told when to kill, when to think.

Brought up now in anger, the hammer in hand,
Thor reaches ‘cross Midgaard to strike foreign lands,
He will strike once for freedom and strike once for fate,
One final blow to exsanguinate.
Bring down his foe with the sound and the fury,
His wrath; executioner, judge and the jury.
And so upon this desert-stage,
The gods prepare to unleash their rage.

The thunder peals,
On death’s fell heels
The lightning, wicked truth reveals.

The carrion crows wait for what will be
The first great battle of the century.
Fenrir snarls and hungry-waits
There before Fallujah’s gates.
In every shadow hides sure damnation,
Here death is not an aberration.
A fact is the battle.  A fact is dying;
The rules of engagement not applying.

And so the hammer hovers there,
Suspenseful moments without compare.
The anxiety builds, the hounds in their slips,
Troops cleaning their weapons and checking their clips.
Waiting for a word, waiting for a breath,
Through flaming maw to the belly of death!
The charge beneath the cannon’s roar
Bears witness to the power of Thor!

The lightning flashes,
As mankind clashes
And jagged light through dark sky slashes.




Part 2. Fire in Fallujah

The trickster’s fire engulfs the men
Who wage this war in the dragon’s den
The boldest men tempt Loki’s ire,
The wounded, falling back; retire.
A symphony of sound and light,
The tracer fire in the dead of night,
Rifles clatter; the sound is keen
The night is blinding and the foe unseen.

The defenders fight not to survive
For blessed martyrdom they strive.
In the name of Allah and for Islam they die,
For this land, their home; they bloody will lie.
While all the world impatient waits,
Fires burn past Fallujah’s gates.
Once more into the breach!  Men plunge
An Army of One, their foes to expunge.

And the fires burn bright
In the first sunlight
The city of mosques, ‘o what a sight!

And the Valkyries descending now,
As tortoise tanks through buildings plow.
How fitting here are Wagner’s chords?
As the warrior maidens draw their swords,
And launching forward to the fray;
Leading the charge to burning day.
The desert, all-alive with flames
Dancing to the tricksters’ games.

Stooping from the clouds on high
A host of locusts down does fly.
Shattering the virgin earth,
Explosive rape: the fire’s birth.
Inferno, now engulfs the earth
From which there shall be no rebirth.
Locked in vicious combat here
Until the Valkyries appear.

The sacrificial cow,
Fallujah is the Tao.
No denying; apocalypse is now!




Part 3. Ashes of Fallujah

The flames burn into smoldering embers,
Great inferno, ash remembers.
Rain upon the broken city;
Freya’s love and gentle pity.
Pouring sorrows for the soldiers
Lying dead while the city smolders.
City ‘neath the soulless sky,
City burnt to deify.

Phoenix rises from the ashes;
Weathering the thousand lashes,
The healthy lying with the slain;
Escape from death, attempt in vain.
Feigning death to slip past fate,
For death does not commiserate.
Shattered defenders run away,
Live to fight another day.

Ashes to and fro,
Smoldering embers glow.
The Reaper: sweeping low.

In the fire’s ashen ending
Destruction’s remnants are blending.
Vagrant ash upon the zephyr,
The Earth weeps for the souls who left her.
Surrender; ashes to the skies,
Fallujah: to the Valkyries.
And Freya gently pours her sorrows
For the pain of lost tomorrows.

Bring forth the triumph wreath!
Laurels crown the brow beneath!
Light the fires of democracy!
Pray you that the sightless see!
The pyres kindled will burn bright,
Oe’r the ash an eerie light
Foreboding glow of victory;
How arrogant and vain are we?

Where amid the lies: sense?
Trembling, the ash of violence,
There is nothing now but silence.




Part 4.  Tears for Fallujah

Uncounted are the casualties,
Who’ve fallen there beneath dark seas.
A sea of Fallujah’s bitter tears,
Sobs amongst the victory cheers.
The cries of families split asunder
By general’s order or pilot’s blunder.
The nightmarish warlike sanity,
At what cost; humanity?

A father mourns his child and wife,
And begs that the soldier end his life.
A youth takes up the battle rifle,
And charges screaming; his life a trifle.
The battle over, his spirit broken,
His valiant sacrifice is token.
A woman falls while getting water
To tend her children mid’ the slaughter.

Chorus for the fallen sing!
Let your voices clearly ring;
Man is the measure of everything!

Tonight the giant makes his bed
In the desert with the dead.
They homeward send the body bags,
Draped in pride with homeland flags.
Can they not see the irony?
The dead scorn the flags for they are free.
Ten thousand souls here lie in slumber
And mourn those missing from their number.

Valhallan Halls are filled with laughter,
Wine and revelry hereafter.
Foe with foe in brotherhood,
Their differences are understood.
Death the one great unity,
Perhaps the only opportunity
For the gods to mediate,
And to guide us to our fates.

The Valkyrie appears
And her gentle smile endears.
Thunder. Fire. Ash.  And Tears.


-Kevin Metcalf