The shadows of my words grow longer under the setting sun, misspoken,
I stare into the mists of the northern laurel trees.
I wait for warriors to come.
Come, I call in my mind and heart,
Come.

Warriors with blue tattoos scream their battle cry,
and, look there—fighting limbs, heads down, running naked out of the mists.
Like a baby being born, they offer their bodies and their lives.

Emerging from the mists, their bellows make
the fog of war a tangible unknown.

“We will break you,” says the doctor to the baby
as he takes him away, giving the mother a sucker
and a dark waiting room.

They cut his foreskin, tattoo his body with the symbols of a warrior
who screams without shame, none knowing their meaning or power.

Running barefoot, long spears and wide shields,
great magic hums and sparks around him,
because the enemy has war machines.
The enemy doesn’t care for magic—
magic is given to reward virtue,
and virtue preserves the land and sky.
“The only sex that war machines know is rape,”
speaks the druid who knows magic is madness.

But the best part came when the Clockwork Empire
could not make it to the edge of the world: those babes,

brave, running with the chaos of the wind,
offering their bodies and their lives

to their mothers first, and then the northern winters,
and then to the biting and cutting armies
of undead Latin words,

their poetry woven into blue skin-tattoos,
stronger than armor and siege machines.

The Strength of Men was victorious then,
and it will be again.

Oh come,
let them come

naked into the mine fields,
their innocent minds never suspecting the bombs;
they will have only wide
shields and long spears. Warriors that die
find themselves running in green fields
with the sun caught high on their brow,
and if they live the mists will return them
to their brethren.
Against all odds they will win again.

And if they all die, we will all die with them
after a long rape.
There will be nothing left for the machines to ravage.

We will follow those warriors to their fields and a new sun,
whether we like it or not.

Those naked men will leave fertile fields
for us to till in peace.
Swiftly they disappear,
only to emerge from another mist against another enemy.

Their Will cannot be broken.