War Poetry

Optical Illusion

It was just the kind of day for feeling
Myself. In myself, by myself, only
Me. Looking outside
justified
Introspection: gunmetal sky
Waiting to download. Already printed,
The pavement displayed its coat
Of many colours: radiant spew,
Takeaways almost as good as new
And dog shit…
NO FOULING
Snarls the lamppost, with a punier note
Threatening fines for dog-owners. Why
Pick on me? I bag it up, fresh minted,
Every time (honest).
Just because I'm lonely
Doesn't make me guilty. Anyway
What makes a dog's arse so much less appealing
Than a human mouth?
We pick our way,
My dog and me, and it isn't him that's growling.

Now we've turned the corner. That's when stuff
Gets better isn't it? Look up, take heart
(If not give it):
A change is gonna come.
I know too well the way before me. Grim,
Grimy (decent) suburban road to a field
Desecrated most by those who'd never mark
Their sacred lawns.
Even as the wind whips
Rain in my eyes, I look for hope ahead.
Sure enough,
Distant, but so distinctly marked apart
From the normal blur in the bleary air,
I conjure up a Chapman work of art
Before I see the man in his wheel chair.
That's it. I never thought my day would yield
A misery worse than mine.
What shits would park
A cripple on the pavement? Get rid of him
By exposure - his, not theirs?
Is he dumb?
No strength to heave his protest to his lips?
No sign from houses close about him…
Is he dead?

( Why can't I run to him? Maybe disbelief... )

The quality of mercy

Think dark. Dig deep. Now throw away the soil
That masks and marks the meanings we have lost:
Mass graves of wormy words. No flesh and blood -
Worn origins of speech, maimed skeletons
Of a species with a bastard progeny:
What's left of language. Prodigal, undead,
Not mute but mutant. How it twists and turns
To uncreate! We say not what we do.

Take mercy (having lost it). Take the trail
That leads abusers to a resurrected ghost.
The thing we killed may yet be understood -
Not felt, perhaps, by brute automatons,
But sensed as concept, essence, quality,
Like-whatness. Ghost with ghastly tale unsaid,
A word unmeant for kindness justly earns
The right to say its truth, if not to make it true.
"I have known what it is to be loved,
Cherished:
I am first-born. If meaning is lived,
Nourished,
As the scion whose sign spells the blood
Of the breed,
Those core values ingested as food
For a Creed,
I am worth your belief. More than good
I am goods.
Where's the mercy in merchandise, then?
Vanity!
I call merchants and mercenaries men -
Humanity.
Find a place where no pitiless barter
Flourished;
Or a time when no pitying martyr
Perished;
Or a word that could turn the world round
In a flash -
Changing goods into good, telling power
Of pity,
So that arms become alms and the poor
Run the City…
Merci! Give me my money's worth. My pound
Of flesh."

2
( How rare to coin a word that finds us out... )