At The Bridge

The guy that used to bivouac with me was a plumber before he got sent to the camp. He got nailed for talking just a little too loud, told a friend “I never voted for the son of a bitch.” Someone overheard him calling the President names, reported him to the partisans, that’s how he wound up where he did. They shot him down a few miles back for saying it again. They left him for the vultures.


these bastards marching us are heading for a trap


they blindly follow orders to get to the ravine


saltpeter air laced

with some other fragrance I can’t place


the allies come to save us fore and aft with us between



we the captured walk on the outside


our captors prodding us along within the rank and file


cowards to the end

if you take their guns, their bestest friends


we all on the march together mile after mile after mile


The guy that marched with me when we bugged out from the camp was a journalist. He had it on authority, said, “You heard right, the wall wasn’t supposed to keep the southerners out. Our former friends, up to the north of us, built a bigger wall that cost half as much as ours, which was embarrassing enough for the son of a bitch in Washington, but they built it for the same reason we built ours: to keep us in.”
Poor bastard made the same mistake I did, putting country before party. Just before he disappeared he said, “The bombs were never pointed at the enemy. The war was never against them. It was against us.” I can’t get that out of my head now. Was it all a mistake?



the right turn their artillery on the leftists in the hills


Guilder and Florin fight the bears who are encroaching


our alliances from overseas

are fighting brought down to their knees


and we are on a bridge and we can see our end approaching



Your Bible has some wisdom in it, but you do not listen to wisdom, so it doesn't surprise us that you missed the part that said, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Yours did not, and we were quite happy to watch as you tore yourselves apart, which in the end made it easier for us to come in at your most vulnerable moment.
As for your prisoners, we don’t care about them or you; we only came for the land. But now the best and most productive acres are burned and salted with radioactive dust—useless to us.
And haven’t you heard, your president is on a plane headed somewhere, most likely to the bears we think. He abandoned you when he saw he couldn’t have it all at his personal disposal.



the allies are before us


the allies are behind us


and now nobody needs us


so just for spite we’re going over



my life is in your hands now to spare me or to take


your life has no awareness that mine was no mistake


we are more than a sunken cost for a war we never wanted


this land and what it stood for is now forever haunted



(social justice!)—we fought to save this country too


(equality!)—we fought to save it from the likes of you


the world is streaming you, your hate and all that you've become


and they've taken arms against you every mother’s son



I beg the world remember please remember what you saw


to my captors I say burn in hell for killing rule of law


burn in hell for all that you inflicted on your brothers


burn in hell with a ringside seat as Satan fu—