L) Browning Nine Millimetre

They told me to keep it hidden.
This wasn't like the SLR,
The rocket launchers or the Carl-Gustav,
There was no playing with this,
This had value.
Small high powered hand gun,
Easily concealed, easily taken, easily used.
Keep it hidden, keep it safe.

We played with the L3A4 SMG,
A pug little machine gun
That could blow your fingers off
If you didn't hold it right.
We darted around the camp,
Always firing from the hip and screaming.
We even played with GPMG,
When we could manage to lift it.
A big gun, very powerful, very heavy.

They set it up on one of the ranges,
No targets just a pile of sand and some old bits of wood.
"Don't go up the wall, no carving you names in the bricks."
One of them fed the rounds in for you,
A heavy belt of shining brass.
"D.M.A." - "Don't go up the wall."
The wood became splinters and sawdust in the pockmarked sand.
"D.M.A." - "Don't go up the wall."
It was so tempting,
The power in my hands,
Like cutting through butter.
But they fed the rounds in
And they told you when to stop.

The Browning was different,
Like it had a life of it's own.
It's snub fat bullets,
Like nasty imps eager for a fight.
I didn't shoot,
I just tried to stop it killing people.
Before I knew it
The clip was empty
And the pistol open
And naked in my hand.

Keep it hidden.
The metal sat heavily against my thigh
In the camouflage combats
- before they were in fashion.
The deep heavy pocket sagged with it's load.
Keep it safe.
I was just a boy,
A long way from knowing
The reality of sex.
If I had known, known better,
I would have been disturbed
By the way my mind lingered
On the barrel
And trigger,
And the comfort of that weight
Against my thigh.