I stand in the trenches of a war long gone.
Nothing remains but the battlements of an old conflict, the craters of missiles long since past,
vines grown from the blood spilled that day, that week, that year, that era of conflict encapsulated in a single moment.
Bodies rot and decay over time, returning to the earth as they decompose.
The soil claims what bodies had not been taken and stripped,
the garments and tags and equipment pulled from the corpses,
before the naked corpus is tossed into a mass grave among what were once friends and foes.
But steel is not given such a luxury.
Mechanical soldiers litter the trenches, oil and gunpowder staining their standard-issue faces,
many given cold, empty looks, threatening visors covering thermal cameras,
a speaker placed beneath the "eyes" for communication,
and a head round enough to fit a helmet.
Flayed wires spew out of empty sockets that once held an arm or a leg or a head.
The smell of rust and acid more potent than the stench of death.
Wilting grass beneath the steel carcasses, bodies that cannot return to whence they came.
They have no soil to return to, no place for their soul to go.
What had been deemed still usable was taken to the factories, repurposed for a new machine,
one which would make the war last longer than the last model did.
I stick my head out of the trenches, as a fear overtakes me,
but alas, no man's land has been quiet for quite some time now.
No longer do whizzbangs fly overhead.
But as I look over the ridge…
suspended in the air, facing towards me
held up by jets running ever so silently
his body a rough optimization of the human form
head, upper torso, lower torso,
upper arm, lower arm, hand,
upper leg, lower leg, foot
his outer plates reflect the cloudy sunlight, his joints slick with oil
(looks like someone's been taking care of himself)
in his hands a well maintained weapon
what could cut down an army or pick off a pawn
the ammunition stored within his chest like an unbreakable pinata
two dots and a curved line, a form easily recognizable
the human brain was made for that, it was made to recognize a friend
but a friend this is not
Mars, the Bringer of War