SWEATING SOLDIER

Among the greenness and stillness of nature, there lies a soldier, a sweating soldier,
His softly soaked body of eighteen years rests rigidly in the soil without a sound or veer,
And upon his painted face of spinach, lime, and emerald is a layer of wet sweat, blood, and tears.
For he is, while shrouded in shadows, lying before the sky’s fiery boulder.
He lies there, hides there within the jungle internal, as does the sweat that grows on him with 
          each degree of inferno, 
And his heart pumps, it bumps lively against his chest at nanosecond intervals.
And each pound or thump shakes his body, a body lying to molder.

There, the soldier lies, a sweating soldier.
 
He lies there with thoughts thought silently from scenes seen violently over and over.
He lies there, sodden in the soggy mud, soundless all around less the leaves that thud,
Sweating, bleeding, shedding tears like the fellow soldiers that have already perished into dead duds.
And the blood sprouting from his chest pours like an outbreak, wrapping his shoulder.
It spreads all over, and under he cowards for another minute into his dying hour,
As he rests among the countless corpora whom have long decayed so sour.
And tries not to smell, before the sweat-sizzling sun, his own rotting odor.

There, the soldier tries, a sweating soldier.
 
And the sweat sizzles, it fizzles into drizzles of dying drops grown older.
It sizzles on his countenance of caution, which sags in an expression of fear and exhaustion,
And with each ray received, each breath heaved is with pure precaution.
For even the cindering sun cannot heat the beat of a heart thumping colder.
It cannot provide a heavenly haven, where which he could think of his distant maiden,
Who cannot, after his fights fought, sought to see that he will be no craven.
So he lies, he cries, sweating tears for any praises he never told her.

There, the soldier cries, a sweating soldier.
 
He cries a last tear for past years when the fastest cure to heal her was to hold her.
And like his lady are those fancy films on cable, and family feasts upon that distant table,
For the sound of mirthful movies, sight of mouthful meals are now senses of silence and sable.
They decompose, under his black weapons and green clothes, like a motionless motor.
Finally, the wind whisks its way into the scene’s silence, as his arm and armor stiffen into a 
          moribund alliance,
Blown away are the sweat, blood, and tears he shed for and within the jungle violence.
His heart dies now, thumping frozen, and his life olden closes like a folder.

And there, the soldier dies, once a sweating soldier.


© 1999, © March 1996 (Original Version)