The Day The Beaches Rained

The blood did wash the beaches clean of tears and sweat that day

It washed of us humanity, and each step brought us forth

Unto the hell that awaited, upon those German guns

For war had found these beaches on a spearhead in the north

My friends, we crowded in that boat, awash in sickly light

We cut through thrashing waters that mirrored our pallid mood

And I did see their faces etched with fear, a distant shadow

'Till we did fall unto the water, thrown into the feud

And there ensued a hell on Earth, for masses were cut down

and blood did soak the water and the sand upon that beach

I stared forward, at bodies piled high upon its shores

And stepped over my dead comrades, with ten bullet wounds each

And faces of the dead lay frozen in their final frenzy

The battle had but just begun when they were first cut down

like hogs awaiting slaughter, and they served that destiny:

Be butchered on the beaches or in frigid waters drown

And I did dodge the flying shells up to the water's edge

My senses numb, ears ringing in the screams and canon shells

Chunks of the earth torn up amidst the battle of two gods

Who deemed it fit that day to send us unto living hell

I ran, my body weakening, like but a puppet charged

With fear and that tired instinct to see my home once more

Please, let me live, for I won't die upon these foggy beaches

So far from home and family, upon the dusk of war!

I dared not look back at the water, where I knew more men

Did fall in battle, bullets through their hearts and through their brains

Or blown up beyond recognition in their human body

That day, the blood did not run but it surely on us rained

Soaked with the salt of the Atlantic, or of tears that dared

not fall when I had reached the end of earthly recognition

My mind fell silent in that fight, for there lay nothing living

No scrap left of humanity for earth in my cognition

No words escape me now as that day blurs within my conscious

I saw it, but I can't recall events that cannot be

For did we die like animals upon those blood-soaked beaches?

The hell that scattered bodies in the sand I still can see

The edge of human consciousness, the edge of any sense

No words can capture man destroying man in empty blood

No words to feel the bullets cut into my heart and fell me

No words to see a friend's face cold and lifeless in the mud

And I don't know what deity deigned to preserve my soul

To let me live, and let my sanity even remain

For I owe my own life unto my bullets and my boots

Or surely I would have died there the day the blood did rain