PINK MIST

PINK MIST

A land of dust and gravel
has a daytime pink mist -
a treachery that grows instead
of trees, in a coward's plastic-war
as a clever demonic hatred
digs a tomb-garden of harm,
designing not a green landscape
but a scarscape, of that plant
stock grafted to the ground
with the wiry seed of an
Improvised Explosive Device
(IEDs), of that seminal
genus a destructive orchard
grows of a sudden as it is
the like of watered by, say, just
that one stray footprint, whether
the tread of Afghan child, a
mother, or a soldier, for even
in any just close by, with
a plastic melt in nuts and bolts
for as-if blades, this fruit
gangrenes to rot in an instant
that peels and dices,
amputates legs as well as feet,
makes cripples of whomever
is there, of whom is near, or,
else, if it be a prime detonator
whose inadvertent tread
braved into barrenness,
trips the germinator, that
dread trigger, a last trip wire,
and goes in a blurt to gas
reacted to parts so small,
the risk-facing squaddies
call it pink mist.

- WDK

- based on the broadcast British BBC One documentary 'THE BOMB SQUAD, Episode Two- Rod's Team - - [After a missile strike kills an insurgent laying an IED, bomb disposal operator Rod and his team are dropped into the area by helicopter to investigate. Captured on helmet camera, we see what Rod sees as he is standing over the bomb, which could kill him if he makes one wrong move.

THE BOMB SQUAD - Episode Two - Rod's team

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