Unnumbered boys regarding me
But glad said they that I had come
Their swaying souls were safe said they
For Christ had steered them home.
For I am sailing these fierce Arctic seas
Berth place for three thousand men
I shout to wake them, if they please
To come back home with me again.
Imagine I could make them wake
To make them come with me
Undrench their eyes for Heaven’s sake
And heed them lively to my plea.
Imagine I could make them dream
Of life beyond this sickened sea
Where salty bones on the northern beam
Could remake themselves and follow me.
But standing taut near the heaving prow
My frozen face tormenting me
A voice, chastising, would not allow
My thoughts on their immortality.
‘Go now and leave these three thousand boys
Leave these slumbering boys with Me
For they shall sleep the sleep of joys
All loved, all safe in My eternity.’
It’s not the deaths of old men
That cuts me to the quick
It’s not the surge of the blooded sea
That grieves me, makes me sick
But faces of the very young
That surface and then sink down
And sink down deep where I cannot see
Where I cannot see them drown.
THINKING YOU’RE NEAR
In the lap of the waves
I hear your voice
On the incoming breeze
I feel your fear
In the holidaying children
I weep for your loss
With the passage of years
Betrayal has snared us
Yet set fair in my heart
Unforgotten.
ON THE BEACH I HEAR YOU CALLING
While on this beach the children play
Let us honour the day
While fond life has moved on
Here met Death many a son
My sad voice calls loudly
Remembering proudly
Come wind, come tide
Let my frail voice bestride
On the beach I hear you calling
From that honoured time appalling.
D – D A Y TUESDAY, 6TH JUNE 1944
THE FALLEN BOYS HAVE GONE ASTRAY
This pulsing boy
A corpse
Within a splintered second
His tensioned grip
His sweating tremble
His prayerful pleas
All gone.
All gone
This shattered self
Now just
A floating hindrance
For other souls of
Other desperate boys
Not yet corpses
To thrust past
Against, aghast.
For they,
Corpses yet to be,
Wade against
Incoming Death
Saturating them
With salty demons
Caught unaware
In this speck of Time.
Dear Jesus,
Mother,
Salvage me
From Satan’s touch
From the froth
Of terrored death
Of chattering end
As more corpses
And the nearly corpses
Horizontally
Sway past
Or thud together.
Each corpse unique
Where those still
Complete with heads
And faces
May hold
Expression
Yet splintered
Shocked
Fiercely disapproving
Such change of state.
Here it ends,
Swilling and swaying
Along the gritty shore
Buckles and kit
Catching other
Broken dreams
Amid the filth
Of other previous lives
Stacked along the shallows
Of beach and history.
Poor boys, poor souls
Known now only
by discs of identity,
If still attached,
Yet useful in collection
Of these thousands
Identifying
The unwilling departed.
May Our Risen Lord,
Weeping,
Note these corded discs
As the souls troop in
Ununiformed for sure
United on some beach
We know not of
In hope and trust on
This remembered day.
Slipping through the beating race of Time
We have scurried, dreaming, nine by nine
Witching, singing, making spells by rhyme
We covet that which for now is thine.
Witches! Pray thee, let us sing our song
We thrive on hatreds amid the throng
Our joy is found in fortune truly long
And spell out our truths where we belong.
Arriving, surviving
Fair witches dreaming
Of mating and hating
Scratching, detaching
Spoiling and boiling
Spitting and hitting
Those whom we hate.
Remorseless in poison
Looting, deforming
Beckoning, storming.
Thrusting and pinching
Stabbing and wasting
Jabbing and tasting
Chasing hot blood.
Rub-a-dub-dub
Rub-a-dub-dub
Rub-a-dub
Rub-a-dub
Rub-a-dub-dub.
Well said creatures, well portrayed
They shall suffer and be sore afraid.
While some might scheme their petty hates
We pull, entice and seal their fates.
Blessed ones, we have re-formed here
Scent you some horrors in this air?
Although our notions are not yet clear
We wait until we shall mount the stair.
We, a thousand years and more, have flown
From pale, torn Macbeth long since cheated
Time cracks open and through we slip
Disasters await those defeated.
I had a dream the other night
It gave me such a bloody fright
I saw a figure foaming blood
Lunging and spewing all it could
And then the creature spotted me
Twisting, belching sin instantly
It leapt toward me blazing hate
And as I threw myself too late
I knew the fiend would kill me there
I knew the fiend, I knew the stare
For this was Putin, Satan’s son
His bile engulfed me, I was done.
Awake, convulsed, my screaming head
Saw that Satan desires us dead.
Hush! I’m on at last to Adolph Putin
I’m quizzing him about all that shootin’
Believe his eyes and mouth are spraying blood
He froths and spits his bile and says he would
Kill us all and then return to lootin’.
I call on our PM to stop it
Before I troop out there and cop it.
2013
Still commenting on one of our campaigns, this time Afghanistan. Please note: in the British Army of the 19th Century, a detachment of men would be chosen to make an attack which all knew to be suicidal, thereby making it highly unlikely that any would survive. This detachment was known as The Forlorn Hope.
Forty-five minutes and we’re all done
Baked and frazzled like some currant bun.
That man Kelly, he’s to blame
His indiscretions a bloody shame.
He’s done it now, the suspected suicide
Nodding to the altar of another’s pride.
The political Magician, a-gleam with revelation
Certain in his piety as he dupes a doubting nation.
2007
Pray you, out here, somewhere, I have forgot me
Where may I find my precious, unlived, mislaid life?
When last I knew I sniped behind some plum tree
Billy-fear-not immune from this so clamorous strife.
Well, Billy Boy, our politicians a-dream with swanky glory
Have spent your life and gleam, unhindered by your puny fury.
But now I sense a stilly difference has become me
A starry loneliness and longing – Where is my girl?
Our sniping party looking strange in death, I see
Swift chattering hail swarmed and cut us to a swirl.
Well, Billy Boy, our politicians a-dream with swanky glory
Have spent your life and gleam, unhindered by your puny fury.
Where have I left me? My understanding is mis-matched
So disconnected, separate, shorn of love and living flesh
Blinded in twilight, a splintered dream is quite detached
And yet I half-remember children’s laughter in a crèche.
Well, Billy Boy, our politicians a-dream with swanky glory
Have spent your life and gleam, unhindered by your puny fury.
2007
As I sent many to the Wars
I had a thought that gave me pause
What if the lies that sprang from me
Would cling liked dried, coagulated blood
On other mouths, on other faces
Faces which, if they but could
Would wipe my lies from memory.
2007
Ah! You still here?
It can’t be just the pleasant beer.
But as I was saying
Before those press boys came a-baying.
I’m sort of just a regular guy
With all that that then can imply.
Those Tories were a heinous crowd
In whom the country can’t be proud.
Our fortunes they had truly wasted
By sleaze, dishonoured and emaciated.
I’m sort of just a regular guy
With all that that then can imply.
A new dawn breaks from heaven’s east
And we shall all be newly policed.
A new dawn our children shall salute
Whence comes sweet sunshine unpollute.
I’m sort of just a regular guy
With all that that then can imply.
Don’t delve too deep for you may touch me
Cause me to wobble rather than to spin, see.
To rent and change this country, I’m avowed
With foreign fields awash and bloody bowed.
I’m sort of just a regular guy
With all that that then can imply.
2007
The case against poor David Kelly
In retrospect looks rather smelly.
2007
I may be tacky round the edges
But I have given golden pledges
Your sons and daughters lie safe with me
Lie safe, that is, in some cemetery.
2007
We must consider, in this august Committee
Designing headstones, more’s the pity.
Fit for splintered girls and headless boys
Who fought and died for one man’s ploys.
World War headstones won’t suffice
As they would cost too high a price.
All that carving and all that pride
Surely unnecessary, on the other side.
Something simpler, rather bland
To quell Death’s fury at a one-man band.
The skirmishing Committee, all slithering, make a plea
That they be granted absolution from the magician’s legacy.
Envisaging a committee, its belief in the war shot away, wishing to disassociate itself from the war in Iraq.
2007
How now, that in the sightless, mean and sooty night
I am besieged with visions that affright me
Choke me, throttle me with their easy might
And curse a dodgy war I waged so morally?
And marching regiments of boys now out of time
Chant and unnerve my drenched, dissembling heart
They brandish severed parts to demonstrate the crime
Wading through sandy blood as recriminations start.
This shameful outcome I neither sought nor wanted
Where prophesying hags reveal a folly and such incandescent rage
Not on some ancient heath where lineage was granted
But here in Britain now, my gift of nightmare to the present age.
Reawakened medieval passions lead to daily slaughter
A fractured, ruptured, broken zone where all can die
How my silken tongue bodes ill for son and daughter
When I heaped on warring Iraqis a democratic presumption and a lie.
2007
Strutting like fascists pumping hard, oozing pomp
Twin leaders, at twin lecterns now stiffly arriving
Muscle-bound mouthings from twins on the stomp
Our language deformed with mis-facts so contriving.
Frozen smiles pucker lips seen on millions of tellies
While out there our lads fear lead in their bellies.
The leaders synthesize speeches with ranting rejoicing
Though casualties leap towards sickening highs
Hugely asleep to the grief millions are voicing
Swimming too deep in a tissue of lies.
Frozen smiles pucker lips seen on millions of tellies
While out there our lads fear lead in their bellies.
2007
Another three, another three
Smashed boys have gone to heaven
While in the dirt and in the sand
There lie remains of someone’s hand.
Surely this isn’t what the PM planned?
And don’t forget the other boy
Maimed and weeping, deep in shock
Splattered with mucus, flesh and crap
Victims of someone’s little trap.
Will this, at last, make the PM snap?
Don’t hold your breath
Don’t think about it
Just thank the Lord that you’ve survived
You’ll see the lads on the other side.
Remember son, it’s the PM’s pride.
Your ears and scalp are now quite separate
Skin’s been torched and seems on fire
Those eyes of yours that once did shine so
“And shall I see my love again though?”
The Chaplain feared it must be “No”.
But when you’re back in Blighty, son
Don’t visit the Clinic with your uniform on
As you’ll offend those separate, sensitive folk
And could be judged you did provoke.
Your plans are dashed, and at a stroke.
Surely this wasn’t what the PM planned
As bullets rip through Iraqi sand.
O Master, lead us to the Promised Land!
This poem was written in July 2002. Since when the British Forces deaths have accelerated and currently [10 Aug 2007] stand at 168…………..and counting!
2007