This is a songfic to Massive Attack's excellent song "False Flags" I originally wrote it as a writing exercise on descriptive scenes. It turned out well, in my opinion, so I thought I'd post it. Well, here it is. Enjoy.
Just to note: a personal transport is basically a modern car, from what I understand from the novels, particularly the "Ravenor" novels. Excellent books for Fluffologists such as myself.
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In city shoes
Of clueless blues
Pays the views
And no-mans news
Blades
will fade from blood to sport
The heroin's cut these fuses short
Smokers rode a colonial pig
Drink and frame this pain I think
I'm melting silver poles my dear
You bleed your wings and
then disappear
They are on the ground.
Rockets whizz over the guardsmen's' heads, incandescent balls of liquid fire in the darkness, what little light is present glinting off of their hulls like ceremonial trumpets, sounding not to signal the arrival of some important dignitary, but the arrival of a quick, horrific, and imminent death. The squad breaks and the men run for cover, madly scrambling like children, like cockroaches scurrying for shelter as a light is turned on. The rockets impact several hundred meters from the concealed men. A shockwave washes over them, a force so strong that many of them are knocked over. A shockwave so fearsome, that it feels as though the whole planet has torn itself apart in a single, violent, self destructive moment. Slowly, apprehensively, the guardsmen come out of cover and move on down the block.
The moving scenes and
pilot lights
Smithereens have got 'em scaling heights
Modern
times come talk me down
And battle lines are drawn across this
town
Parisian boys without your names
Ghetto stones instead
of chains
Talk 'em down cause it's up in flames
And nothing's
changed
Parisian boys without your names
Riot like 1968 again
The days of rage yeah nothing's changed
More pretty flames
They meet the enemy face to face at last, entrenched behind a makeshift barrier of burnt out personal transports. Las and auto fire laces through the air, like miniature knives in the darkness, slicing the air as though in the hands of a butcher. Zipping through the darkness like deadly, shining, parasites, eager to locate a host to feed upon. Each soldier knows that sooner or later, one of those barbs of light or slugs of metal will find him, will tear, quickly and painfully, into his flesh like a hungry carnivore, eager for a warm meal. They pray that it is later rather then sooner.
In school I would just
bite my tongue
And now your words they strike me down
The
flags are false and they contradict
They point and click which
wounds to lick
On avenues this Christian breeze
Turns its
heart to more needles please
Our eyes roll back and we beg for
more
It frays this skin and then underscore
The case for war
you spin and bleed
The sales you feel screensavers feed
The
girls you breed the soaps that you write
The graceless charm of
your gutter snipes
The moving scenes and suburbanites
And
smithereens got 'em scaling heights
Dawn is fast approaching, or it could just be the light from the hundreds of fires burning throughout the city. They burn continuously and without stopping, as more and more of this once proud city is reduced to crumbling ruins and slowly drifting ash. Still the squad moves ever foreword, ceaselessly continuing through this dark, hellish maze of death. A mortar screams overhead and impacts the second story of a bakery to their left. Masonry and metal are pulverized instantly and rain down on the soldiers, like a cruel imitation of life-giving rain. No, only life-taking rain ever falls here.
Still, the guardsmen press on. They encounter fierce firefights, where every second you live is a second earned, and a second you might not get again. They encounter artillery barrages, shaking the earth and pulverizing everything in its path like the feet of a great, roaming giant. They encounter obstacles so overwhelming that it seems as if they will never make it through, as if it is their predetermined fate to die there, doing the impossible.
Still, they press on.
It's just what they do.
Modern times come talk me
down
The battle lines are drawn across this town
English boys
without your names
Ghetto stones instead of chains
Hearts and
minds and US planes
Nothing's changed
And English boys
without your names
Riot like the 1980's again
The days of
rage yeah nothing's changed
More pretty flames
Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
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Well, what do you think? Short, I know. I may add to it in the future.
R&R PLZ. I would love to hear what you think.