On My Visit to the Hospital

Sterile,
The only word that can describe
the stench invading my head,
like Persian soldiers breaching Athenian lines
and moving through Thermopylae to attack
the vast expanse of inner Greece.
Here ghosts in white coats linger,
gliding from battle to battle,
stooping over the wounded and damned,
heralds of false hopes that fallen men
cling too when their fingers fall,
to weak to hold a sword or spear
in the face of the incoming enemy;
foes who blacken the sky with arrows
like a blanket pulled over a scarlet bed spread.
Sterile,
There is nothing alive here.
White washed walls scream of the monotonous
passing of the souls upon the winds.
Better the rancid rancor of decay
of Persian and Athenian more alike in death
deposited in decomposing heaps,
blood seeping to mother earth
flesh rising to father sky,
then the putrid stench of bleach.
For in the carnage of war
some may still come out alive.