Monday, February 23, 2004

This Is the Color We Breathe

This is the color we breathe.

In our mouth it goes, through the hide of our face. Into our lungs it swirls till in our bloodstream it breeds.

The cough--the sputter--and through the man's eyes there's entrance to where he's going.

His chest is naked, his clothes torn off. His brothers stand round him. Four slugs're in his chest. Inside the tissues and cells making him up his heart's punctured. His pancreas maybe. Even his lung.

The red color permeates out of the four round entrance wounds. He moves back and forth, and writhes and sputters, and gropes and pleads.

"Give me. . .the morphine." He said, through grimacing teeth, through wide eyes, eyes whose view is soon to subside.

"Give it to him," he says, leaning next to him, wiping away blood perpetually flowing out. "Give it him. Goddamnit, give it to him."

It's injected through his legs. It takes time for it to reach his brain, where the morphine goes to the pain receptors, and kills the pain.

This isn't real, this never happened, there's no way. My mind. It's saying.

. . .There's no way. . .

It's only a movie. They're actors. Looking at the screen which is showcasing this dying man, him now calm and docile, going away, a flickering candle. It's only a movie.

But this happened, my brain says. It happened.

So this is war, this is death, this is what it is.

Looking downward on the countless millions killed, it seems like a monster. Looking at it from a panoramic view, it all seems war is a big, tough-as-nails sonofabitch that killed countless people.

But here, zoomed in on one moment, one singular time, on this screen, I see what it's really about. I see it's terrible, and horrid, and bad. But this isn't a monster.

The only monster is the human race.

The ones who fought these battles. Fought these battles over countries that only exist on maps, that're only labeled on them. Fighting over borders that don't even exist but as a line, curving here, straight there, on a map.

He's dead. They get up. They get up and they give him a burial. A proper burial in the ground. After one sits and cries, and his face is strained over seeing such a good man die. A goddamned good man dying, and there was nothing he could do. He was already gone, shot with the machine gun, the titter tatter and booming of it and then the bullets puncturing his flesh, his human, his own flesh, and driving deep in and hitting his heart, his lung, maybe his pancreas.

The others are over with one last remaining German. The one of them who can translate: "He says don't shoot me." They say: "We don't care what he says."

They drive the butts of their guns in him, in him, in him, blood yes bleed you fucker. You kiled him, you killed a good man. You killed a good man, you hear? You killed a good man, and he didn't deserve to die.

They stop. The German stands up. He shouts his words in his only way he knows to talk. His foreign tongue. That slang. The one who can translate says this is wrong. This German doesn't deserve to die.

They all point their guns at him. Over comes the man who was crying, and settles them down.

They get the German up and make him dig some holes. Holes to intern the dead, the shot, the gone. In the hole. And they'll stay there, their flesh decaying off of them, their ribs poking out, their skulls coming out, till there's nothing left. And they'll stay there.

When he's done they blindfold him. They say they should kill him. The one who can translate says: "No, it's not right." And translates what he says.

The German says: "I'm sorry about him." He's sorry he says, don't shoot.

Blindfolded, he tells him to walk 1,000 paces forward till he finds whatever he finds.

They leave him. They leave it.

And it seems so real, my mind says.

And it did happen. Something like this.

And this--this is the color we breathe.

[I decided to write this after watching Saving Private Ryan this morning. That's where I got it all from, only I gave it my own spin, of course.]
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