Their story began in desiccated hills

and fields stripped bare so utterly
that even the rats starved,
the glorious aftermath
of rancid war, blind revolt, and ravening
soldier-locusts.
Tender minds that should have nestled
in warm repose to hear bedtime stories
saw adults ripping their teeth
into the tough hides
of dead neighbors.
Wandering helpless from the corpses
of exhausted parents,
they clung to each other in the
maelstrom of the dust-covered Gehenna,
their numbers thinned by the machine guns
of the proud, blocking Chekists.
They lived by stealing from the dying,
hiding in the indifferent forests,
and learning to forget the last remnants
of kindness.
Their children, born of rape,
and careless whores,
shrieked with delight as they
terrorized the soft little intellectuals
from Moscow, kicking in the faces
of the politicals who tried to stop them.
They ruled the camps, using kids
as bets in card games, and cutting
off the heads of anyone stupid enough
to object to their missing rations.
When the betrayed soldiers flooded in,
the former rulers were deposed, but their
descendants found new empires in the
concrete slab prisons, and the tattoos slithered
across their muscled torsos to keep score
of every plunging knife and cracking skull.
Now, the great grandsouls of the
original Children’s Crusade
rule the nights with shiny automatics,
collect the protection money from trembling
shopkeepers, and smear the pavement
with the brains of those who have had
a less distinguished patrimony.