Dumbrowski was a 6 foot 5 giant
from some hell hole mining town
somewhere south of Pittsburgh.
All sinew and bulging muscle
he looked like a painting
of the perfect, invincible warrior.
Perhaps he heard the incoming
whistle of his private RPG.
He opened his arms as if
to welcome its deadly embrace.
I was circling low overhead
in the waiting medevac chopper.
The round took him directly in the chest.
Every part of him took off
in hilarious random directions.
Arms went east and west. Head skyward.
Legs and boots travelled south.
His entire thorax just vanished.
Blood, brains and skin
splattered everyone nearby.
Later we picked up the pieces
and bagged them for his ride home;
the torn shreds of a man who had been
human one minute and meat on the ground
just a few minutes later.
Invincibility is clearly relative.