Mirrored Memoirs
Before the wake of days despise,
The soldiers daunt their high command.
The pale, early morning skies
Expose the endless vast of land.
A sea of brown flows limitless –
Dry grass clumps and rutted earth.
The Germans stand in coalesce
Prepared to fight for all they’re worth.
Much horror soon is yet to come,
Inferno’s close, its breath grows raucous.
Silence – not a murmured hum,
The pending soldiers, greatly cautious.
The lines of men that stand prepared,
Are shielded by their masks of heft.
Their frail bodies – under–cared,
Are all the hope that they have left.
A pair of brothers – twins at such,
Stand amongst this German force
Shaking with Hell’s fearsome touch,
Their safety, no one can enforce.
The tactic rises; bombs of gas
An agonising, fearful fog
The Germans cause, harsh death at mass
As Allied forces breathe the smog.
The veil of sour–coloured mist
Rolls across the dusty plains.
Taking out those who exist
Thriving anguish yet remains.
Brother twins, side by side
Follow through the fatal haze.
Nerves upon them do their pride,
Messing with their mental phase.
Death surrounds them, hoarding courage.
Screaming torment pains their ears.
Suffering faces, for help they forage.
Souls of bravery disappear.
Thunderous echoes, booming loud
Travel amidst the gloomy fog.
Like broken waves, a stratus cloud,
Explosions to the soldiers flog.
The twins are struck and torn apart –
Ripped away from brother’s side.
Lost among the misty art –
Swamped upon by Death’s harsh tide.
The eldest brother – vision blurred,
Stumbles in the frantic scene.
He screams and shouts, his words are slurred,
His sibling – nowhere to be seen.
Surrounding fear and cruel despair
Flood the eldest brother’s state.
Torture would not close compare,
For now he knows his brother’s fate.
Crumpled in a blood stained heap
The younger twin lies still.
Plunged into an endless sleep –
Another pointless kill.
Staring shocked with disbelief,
He crumbles to his knees.
The eldest brother, filled with grief
Curses at his thieves.
His blood-smeared face, from those unknown,
Forms a sight of hate and sorrow.
For he has lost a man well-known –
A love, you cannot borrow.
A sudden sharp of dreadful pain,
Forces through the live twin’s back.
He looks to see that he’s been slain
And suddenly, his words turn black.
The injured and strident moans
Wake him from his slumber.
The eldest brother, all alone
Yet lives another number.
His shaky hands, reach for his chest
In which he finds a rigid weal.
The foul and ugly manifest
Reminds him of his tortured Hell.
Images flicker through his mind
A cruel, despiteful, nightmare crimson.
His horrors are not left behind,
An everlasting, bitter prison.
He swiftly lifts his aching build
And stares with shaken eyes.
The mirror shows an image killed;
His brother, in disguise...
By Sara