DOGS OF WAR, I KNOW THEE
Though I have knocked on death's door and escaped, the reaper awaits.
DOGS OF WAR, I KNOW THEE...
Verily, I have walked through the valley of death. I have seen the spirits of the damned dance upon the wind. They have no being, no conscience, no feeling, they are the slaves of death. They exist to haunt the inner sanctum of understanding. In this valley rivers of blood have flowed freely in times of war, and that red potion which gives all life is absorbed into the dust, as it flows the land dies, and the bowels of the earth groan in grotesque agony. Deaths bony fingers reach upward, clawing, dragging that which once was, down into the dark realm of the reaper of flesh. Clutching, then binding the victim, suffocating in a frenzied daze until that which was flesh returns to dust.
Twisting spires rise ever upward from the cracked and cragged ground. They are unsightly and bleak as they rise above the parched earth encircling this barren land, holding it in a death grip, as the mighty python that is about to crush and consume its prey. These jagged mal-formed spires are wicked and miserable in appearance, gray and grim as the garb of the exiled. They hover over the macabre valley as prison bars to shield the habitat of death from the sun. The breeze cannot flow; the rain cannot cleanse; life, as we know it, is non-existent upon the face of this valley of horror.
The scorching sun struggles to rise and find its way to the entrance of the harbinger of death. Higher and higher it rises to filter through the clenched fists of the shadow of death. Upon the suns entrance it is magnified as a beam of sunlight through a magnifying glass. Intense, blistering, it streams through the crooked sky to reveal the evil beneath the shadows. The Time of revelation will be short upon this patch of damned ground, but these magnificent beams of light heat the surface to such a degree that it boils the crust beneath, bubbling up, into view, the souls of the damned.
Dancing, writhing, transparent. Barely visible to the naked eye they struggle to rise and escape the grip of their captor. They appear to us as rippling heat waves rising just inches from the parched and heated ground. They writhe and twist but a few feet above the surface to dissipate into nothingness, unable to free themselves from the grasp of death. The force of the sun beating them back into the crevices from whence they came. The heat of the day will pass, and the demons of the valley of death will return to their earth. They will wait, for what will seem to them, an eternity for the next passing of the sun to seek release.
Yea, I have walked through the valley of death. And, as darkness falls upon this portion of my earth, it is inevitable that I will return to this valley upon the closing of the windows of my soul; exiled in solitude to view the carnage of this war of thoughts. Yea though I live in the present, I remain a prisoner of the past. I am recognized by the demons of the night.
I am known as a Viet Nam Veteran.
For this honor, there is no release.