In search of food, we marched out single file
To bring back what the scouts told us was there.
Dutifully pious, facing every fear,
We scaled assaulting heights and lined a shaky bridge.
By night's fall, we reached the gated vault.
The promise, this time, was not overstated.
We could see the bounty more than enough
To fill our coffers, and to keep us sated.
And so we worked to labor and to carry,
With thoughts and fears of winter pushing hard,
Until a light shone bright, and we did scurry,
To flee the presence we felt in our bones.
Too big to see, we sensed the evil menace.
Forboding doom, we smelled a ghastly smell.
Then chemical showers fell from heaven's plenty,
Frying alive, and wilting our exo-skel.
I watched my friends perish in one second.
Then smelled a new whiff, chloride green,
Rain down, as a white rag swift descended
To wipe the dead right up together with the living.
And now, I'm wrapped, alive, but barely squirming,
Discarded in a maze-like catacomb,
Strangling in this gauze sarcophagus,
Entangled with the dead here in this shroud.
"Leave the dead to bury the dead," I hear,
But struggle to free myself from the deception.
The rotting stench of wounds that never heal,
And prison residue stings my feet as well.
I wonder if I did break free, what my reception
Would be to those where I return, who only like to eat?
They won't like me brining this poison back upon my feet.
