Bleak

in death,
laughing skeletons
rattle, sobbing is scarce
among bleached white
sticks stuck in inches of
half climbing, half sitting;
memories in the ether
will not disturb such ruin
but mists wander
soullessly on the sun baked mud
where imprints of warring fists,
seized up with time,
lie on arid soil – mulch for spent
shells and ironclad machinery,
rusted, stuck, cold –
benumbed like the bare bones in shallow
graves still laughing, still unaware
in death.