Owen or Brooke?

Tags

Competition, conflict, history, Humanity, Philosophy, poems, poetry, Rupert Brooke, thoughts, war, Wilfred Owen

War poets: a) poets who lived through times of war

Or b) poets who write about war?

I saw this poster and, for two seconds, considered writing something for it.

Then I read it and began to consider what exactly were they looking for?

Would they want a ‘war is abhorrent, causes nothing but suffering, pain and misery, and it is about time that we evolved Humanity to a state where wars no longer took place’, or would they rather a ‘war is an unfortunate, yet necessary evil, in which good will triumph, and all those who fight are ‘heroes”?

I decided that the ‘judges’ would err towards the latter.

I trust you know that my leaning is towards the former.

I shall not participate.

Advertisements

What Use Are My Words?

Tags

Communication, conflict, creative, Creative writing, Depression, faith, history, Inequality, Life, Love, poems, poetry, politics, Principles, Progress, religion, Truth, verse, war, Words, writing

What use are my words

If the shells still fall

From black-heart open skies

And bombs still separate limb

From torso

On a whim?

If lover’s nights are torn asunder

Each phrase of love declared

And punctuated by the rifle’s kiss

As bullets fly through skies

To deafen out the

Infant’s cries?

If families fractured fall apart

Their bodies as their homes

And stuffed in ragged bags

They walk on paths anew

Hopes and lives askew?

 

What use are my words

If every judgement still

Depends on colour, race or creed

And not on who we are

Those who act so blind

Injustice our own kind?

If passion is fuelled by hatred

And shouted from the stands

Evolution’s backward stare

Feet that stomp and pound

Like we never left the ground?

If all that we can show

Is intolerance and hate

To mask the failings in ourselves

To stick within our clan

And say this is the Plan?

 

What use are my words

If all that we believe

Serves not to heal but pull apart –

Words lost behind the rhetoric –

And sets us off to goad

The wrong way down the road?

If our deities stand toe to toe

As we become the baying throng

Applauding every blow

Forgetting that it’s all a game

And they are all the same?

If faith is lost behind the mask

And we think ourselves the show

Where Glory resides in riches

And ceremony makes us tall

Hidden safe behind our wall?

 

What use are my words

If those who shout the loudest –

The basest of our kind –

Earn mandate over all of us

To wield the sharpened sword

And cut the final cord?

If none of us is equal

And power comes through privilege

Whilst on green fields they scheme

To hold on to the wealth

Through division and through stealth?

If birth outweighs our merits

When change is just a word

And nothing brings a greater good

As islands we shall ever stay

To never see a brighter day?

 

What use are my words?

 

Cities – 3

Tags

creative, faith, history, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

I stand

Stand on the high ground

The victim of

Your disease,

I watch

Watch with a glass eye

As you destroy

What you once made,

I see

See with perception

The jealousy

That you deny,

My limbs

Limbs you have shattered

That held you once

In my heart,

Your hands

Hands of destruction

That turned from me

On a whim,

I fall

Fall on my own sword

A victim of

Your designs,

I cry

Cry as the guns sing

A broken shell

To breath no more.

My Sister’s Heart

Tags

conflict, creative, Equality, faith, Feminist, Fight, Justice, photography, poems, poetry, Resistance, Sisterhood, verse, war, Women, writing

My sister’s heart

Lies in the sand

Where your hatred

Buried it,

But it still beats

And calls her home

In camouflage

Bearing arms.

 

My sister’s heart

Lies in the sand

A shallow grave

Without mark,

But it still beats

Inside your head

Pulses strong to

Track you down.

 

My sister’s heart

Lies in the sand

But will not sleep

Lonely, cold,

And still it beats

And always will

Until it finds

Its peace.

‘Glory, boy; glory’

Tags

conflict, creative, Creative writing, death, loss, poems, poetry, war

Caught in the web

Of nationalistic pride

Swept on by the cries

Of ‘Glory, boy; glory’

The lad grows man

Before her eyes

The mother whose wave

Dries tears on her cheek,

Against the backdrop

Of futures left bleak

By ruin and greed

Things he’ll never see

The promise like sunrise

Shines down on him now

As foreign fields beckon

To him and his pals,

And as the day dawns

And bleeds into night

No respite no pity

From the blind and the deaf

He sees in one flourish

The lies he was told

And he cries like a child

As he sinks in his hole.

Syrian Nights (Not for us)

Tags

creative, hatred, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

Not for us
The tears and pain
The anger and the rage,
Not for us
The song of hate
A river through your veins,
Not for us
Dogmatic words
Which serve to fuel your cause,
Not for us
The lightning tree
That will not bend and sway,
Not for us
The tears and pain
Yet still you use our name.

Parisian Tears

Tags

creative, death, loss, Paris, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

Raise the blade and
Make the cut again
Wasted flesh too soon
Spills from the kidney dish
Strip away humanity
Compassion and respect
No hope for understanding
Empty shells are left
Intravenous hatred
The bodies mount once more
As hope lies drowned in blood
Upon the theatre floor.

On occidental shores

Tags

creative, hatred, ignorance, Philosophy, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

On occidental shores they wait
The invisible divide
Locusts on the scent once more
Yearn for the call to flight,
And to the skies they turn their eyes
To justify their wills
And shun the greater calling
That begs for us to hear,
Passion fires hate-stoked burn bright
By enemies imagined
And vitriolic words thrown
On pathways for our safety,
The fear we fear kept far at bay
By raising terror’s arm
Deflecting from the truth
In blame we find our hope,
And cast our gaze to higher law
Regardless of a name
We shift our eyes to distant shores
Let hatred bury love.

A Ruined State

Tags

creative, loss, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

A ruined street

A ruined state

Broken walls pock-marked

Adolescent skin

Scars that cry out

To be healed

Still worn with

Pride of ignorance

Fear and hate and

Words from those

Who falsely take the crown

And steal our Faith

Beneath a flag

To justify a claim.

A ruined street

A ruined state

Broken faces to the sky

Ever waiting for a saviour

Waiting still

In vain.

 

Eyes Away

Tags

conflict, creative, death, poems, poetry, politics, verse, war, writing

Blistered images
Pictures fractured, torn
Humanity shattered
Scarlet pools
Evaporating like dreams
Beneath a mocking
Sun god
Whose laughter rings
Clear over
The exploding back-beat
A ceaseless rhythm
Pounding skins
The big finish
The chaotic crescendo
That never comes
As Jazz-like
The players search
For the killer note
The deathly chord
With which to stun
And silence
The pleading throng
Whose voices lost
Lie broken
Amidst the shrapnel
And charred-black
Body parts of those
Who saw no need
Yet were the fodder
Of foolish greed
That has no recourse
To higher law –
And who’s to say
It’s all the same –
And still the salt falls
Drowned silent by
Blame and counter-blame
And a sky lit beautiful
A midnight rainbow
Beneath which
No gold glitters
And hope lies twisted
In hues of retribution
And those who cry
‘Is this what we’ve become?’
As in water’s flow
They wash their hands
And turn their
Eyes away.