He is Haiku Division – rattling out fletchette words on the frontlines; mortar rounds. He can see the Long Prose Division a few hundred feet away and he is wondering what they are targetting.
Poets are dangerous now. Slammed into the wall with the force of iambic pentameter. Garot walked around the village that they were stationed in and he was paying close attention to the locals. They had picked this planet because the people were post literate psychics, and they acted as the perfect buffer zone for the troops.
Hafel is a Doggerel Shocktrooper — he sits there at the bar regaling people with tales of his derring-do on the edge of the warzone. Garot laughs with everyone, but seethes privately at the false grandeur in those tall tales. All Garot remembers is blood and unnecessary death.
Wilfred Owen nightmares. Flashbacks to flashbangs. The words disintegrate as time disintegrates. How long ago were The Reality Wars? Are they then? Are they now? He looks down and he has written something.
Shrapnel burns me here,
An inconsolable wretch,
Time forgets itself.
He is there still. Some part of what he is experiencing is a dream, but he cannot wake up. He flings the haiku out of the window.