War

By Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon

Look in my eyes. My bronze skin reflects the flames of the battles.

I feed on bullets and shrapnel.

I have trenches instead of veins and a bombardier's whirring plays my favorite symphony inside my big head. This is my story, with some of my best camouflages and disguises, and you should expect your peace plans to fail. Because that's what I do for living.

Look at my million golden teeth necklace. Ring any bells? Maybe you're too young. I probably should have mentioned the fireworks over the Baghdad night sky, my new friend, or the live broadcast of two great skyscrapers disintegrating. You know what I'm talking about, right? So, you can call me by one of my many names: Great General, Lock-box of the Powerful, Red Rain, Lord of Steel or, more simply, WAR.

I appear as strife of many kinds, from Stalingrad to Scotland. Africa to Afghanistan, the civil war of Italy and the War Between the States, ghostly wars, drug wars, the battle of the sexes, World Wars I, II and visions of a holocaust yet to come. It's all herein and more, with poems both collaborative and individual.

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
• Release date: Jun 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386898733

Alessandro Manzetti

ALESSANDRO MANZETTI (Rome, Italy) is a Bram Stoker Award-winning (and 7-time nominee) author, editor, and translator of horror fiction and dark poetry whose work has been published extensively in Italian, including novels, short and long fiction, poetry, essays, and collections. English publications include his novel Naraka - The Ultimate Human Breeding, the collections The Garden of Delight, The Massacre of the Mermaids, The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (with Paolo Di Orazio) and the poetry collections No Mercy, Eden Underground, War (with Marge Simon) Sacrificial Nights (with Bruce Boston) and Venus Intervention (with Corrine de Winter). His story collection The Garden of Delight has been nominated for the Splatterpunk Awards 2018 He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death Vol 1, The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (with Daniele Bonfanti), Splatterpunk Awards 2019 nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in Italian, USA, and UK magazines, such as Dark Moon Digest, Splatterpunk Zine, Disturbed Digest, The Horror Zine, Illumen, Devolution Z, Recompose, Polu Texni, Nothing's Sacred Vol. 4, and anthologies such as Splatterpunk Forever, Best Hardcore Horror of the Year Vol. 2 and Vol. 4, Bones III, Rhysling Anthology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 3 and 4, The Beauty of Death Vol 1 and 2, Mar Dulce, I Sogni del Diavolo, Danze Eretiche Vol. 2, Il Buio Dentro, and the forthcoming anthologies Midnight Under the Big Top (Cemetery Dance), Rhysling Antology 2019 and Sorrow Anthology. He is an HWA Active member, a former HWA Board of Trustees member, and lives in Trieste (Italy).

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE GREEN LADY

LADY D’ARBANVILLE

THE FIRST MANDINGO WAR: 1883

SUMMERTIME

VUKOVAR’S GHOSTS

SLEEPING MOLOCH

SPECTRAL PERFUME

HUSH

NIGHT OF TEARS

IRAQI SUNSET

GEORGE TECUMSEH SHERMAN’S GHOSTS

THE BLACK SENTRY

ALICE IN HELL

WHITE SIEGE

THE SOUTHERN LADY

MISS SAIGON

TEN TO ONE

THE GHOSTS OF CULLODEN: 1746

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

THE LONG WALK TO HELL

ONE NIGHT STAND

THE CEMETERY WAR: BOOT HILL

POP 9/11

DRUG WARS: FOUR POEMS

BLACK RAY

CHOCOLATES FOR TWINS

HOLY DIVER

THE CASTRATO’S PARADE

YBYI 21

War, n. A by-product of peace

—Ambrose Bierce

THE GREEN LADY

by Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon

In this forever jungle; death hangs

almost palpable in the humidity.

Never mind the napalm—

if you don’t get bitten by snakes,

it’ll be one of their goddam insects you can’t see,

like the one that got the kid from Kansas,

bloodsucker’s poison went straight to his heart.

We’ve got smokes, we’ve got weed

and some other stuff, but no acid, man,

this surreal hell is on the US army.

Twilight’s the worst—there comes

a silence terrible and incomplete,

when your piss freezes

in nighty-five degrees.

Snipers in the bushes,

you can’t see them, but you know

someone’s going to take a hit—

you pray it won’t be you.

Finally morning comes,

time to move out, Sarge’s order,

so we do, each on our own weird trip, man—

a Ulysses patrol and one Siren,

I guess make that my Siren.

Now I see you, now I don’t

but I know you’re following me,

I hear your feet stepping on branches,

the click of your pointy rice-grain teeth,

your voice inside my helmet,

a Harpy’s song, like the sea in a shell.

Through a glimpse of multi-foliage I see

your smooth green thighs opening slowly,

a purple vanda orchid blooming, shaking its petals,

its stamen beckoning like a lover’s tongue,

but you disappear again.

Now I see you, now I don’t,

but I know you’re making yourself beautiful,

combing your vine green hair,

while we sink to the waist,

wade these black waters

holding our rifles over our heads

as if surrending to your beauty—

but wait, this is my fantasy alone,

each of us must have his own.

Now I see you, now I don’t.

Nightfall, we’re still on the move,

and as some beguiled and crazy Wise Man,

I see between the heads of the trees

your dazzling napalm star.

Maybe you’re back in your Mekong

fishing for dead bodies floating,

going through their pockets,

scattering black-and-white photos to the wind,

kissing Viet Kong soldiers one by one

as they glide through the mangroves.

Many linger in your sultry uterus

absorbed into your verdant hell,

while the helicopters of the living

slice the clouds, searching casualites,

all for nothing.

LADY D’ARBANVILLE

by Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon

Paris June 14, 1940

She enters his room,

slender legs encased in silky net,

small flowers caught in webbed designs,

stockings most women would sell their bodies for,

but she is not most women.

A single diamond on a chain around her throat,

faux gems woven in her hair, a shade of blonde

that has to be real as her gray eyes,

the color of ash on war torn ruins.

My Lady D’Arbanville, why do you sleep so still?

I’ll wake you when the tanks move further on,

when the blasts and the bleat of shots dies down

and the moon is low in the western sky.

You think you’ve taken Paris,

but I assure you we’re not done.

Das Fuhrer is a monster, soldier