40 Days

sleepwalker can never die he is the chemical soldier composite of latex and atropine, hellfire, warthogs, desolation, pride, apaches, lasers, dust devils swirling, screaming fire deaths, machine worship, young blond pilots flashing thumbs up, excited smiles of interviewed military wives, shrapnel- paced rockeye anti-personnel bombs spraying death like fireflies over a texas barbecue of human flesh stretching sixty miles across open desert, armageddon over eden, algebraic mosaic of witchcraft, dot pattern magic of omens and signs, victims never knowing what hit them, vivid delivery of hell to nineveh, incendiary reduction of tissue to shadows on the sand, incineration of boots with human feet still in them, pain, mania, technology, history, delirious victims bleeding, eagle with the brains of a weak and frightened victim in its beak, unhappy fate, grief, shame, helpless rage