This morning
fear overtook him again.
It seems a long time ago
now no-one's in charge of my mind
around here
my brain's gone to waste
"I hope they will leave me in peace!"
Often he feels
their eyes
are upon him
peering and planning
with malice
No-one can help him
my veteran
afraid of the war
Every boy must be a brave soldier
. . . decorations and military bands
It was how he wanted to spend his whole life
but his courage did fail him
Their long curly hair
and the blonde manes of lions
were shaved from their skulls
by the merciless barber
five minutes per head
heads heading for glory and honour
He was an overgrown boy
the pride of his mother
the pride of his father
the pride of his girl
a girl with a posy of flowers
"God, what have they done!"
No peace of mind
the mind falls in pieces
bitter the battle
for more self control
those boys were taken too soon
there was no sign of God on their side
it was the Devil they saw
it was the Devil they heard
Saying "War is a beautiful word!"
Before God and the world
some friends took their own lives
whenever death's face
appeared in the air
"Why am I weeping?"
In a minute
the doctor will come
"Someone up there please answer his prayers!"
His prayers go unanswered.
Delirious ramblings
this side of freedom
Farewells to friends
We were "the best men and boys"
We're now suffering
all over again
My father's in heaven
His crown's made of thorns.
Rejoice! that the war
is now at an end
- Mission Accomplished!
Who are these ghosts
and why
are they whispering . . .
silently whispering . . .
What is it
they say . . .
Listen to what they are saying . . .
Mission Accomplished! The
seeds
of
the next war
are
already
planted
This doesn't making happy or comfortable reading Gwil, but brilliant nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteThey say Vincent van Gogh destroyed 75 % of his paintings because he thought they were "no good". Thanks for vote of confidence, although I wouldn't go quite so far as to say it's "brilliant".
Deleteseeds of war
ReplyDeleteplanted by the self-righteous
weeds to cleave
It is the innocents that become the 'dust' of war.
__War is not new today, nor will it be new tomorrow; wars are caused by the pompous powers of greed and hate. The results of those wars, is in the blood of the innocents.
__It must be remembered, though, that a well held umbrella... can protect its holder from a downpour.
_m
I agree with you, Magyar. War is always about greed (for land, for power, for resources), never about a philosophical difference.
DeleteThe seeds of war might literally be the seeds of war. See my replies to Rachel and Shawn below.
DeleteThe bit about the blood groups and the missing Y chromose I mean.
DeleteWhy are we all different?
ReplyDeleteGod slipped up somewhere.
S/he sure did! Humans are a greedy, distasteful lot.
DeleteI dislike the world.
DeleteIt may be not that God slipped up, but that humans slipped up if what I heard on the radio this morning is borne out. I caught the tail end of it, but basically the modern day Cro_Magnon human has an X chromosome from the Neanderthal (women 2, men 1) and no Y chromosome from Neanderthal. It appears to me therefore that we are somehow out of synch due to interbreeding between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. To my way of thinking this might explain why so many people are screwed up and aggressive. This gap in my knowledge I will have to research. certainly we cannot blame God. I seem to recall there are several primate species, maybe as many as 5, who have our human blood groups: O, A, B, AB. You can check this out on the English Blood Transfusion website.
DeleteIt's no good simply disliking the world. If there's something we dislike about the world I think we have to discover the reasons. It is written that "there were giants in the world" for example, and we know that Little John is buried in Derbyshire and he was 9 ft tall, so we have to take into account all that stuff. God is only a scapegoat.
DeleteNobody understands me.
Delete
DeleteIt doesn't worry me if "nobody understands me" as I don't expect it.
Life's too short to be worrying about people understanding me.
DeleteMaybe I'm going off topic here; I was thinking to be born a tree next time, maybe an olive tree, to live a longer life and to see the world change around me - trees, unlike animals and humans do not kill to survive, instead they give life in return. No aggressiveness. No greed. No war. Greetings Maria x
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately being a tree won't save you. They will spray you with agent orange or other dangerous chemicals which will make your leaves turn to dust. Only the poppies survived in Flanders mud. People say all the blood in the soil from the dead horses and people made the poppies grow very well.
DeleteContinued interbreeding?
ReplyDelete__Eventually... we will all be the same, look the same, think the same, act the same, and opine as one; we will all be the same.
Extra Terrestrials, ETs.
How astute. Yes, we will all wear silvery clingfilm suits. We will all speak with Professor Hawking voices. We will all have computer chips embedded in our brains which will download all we think and do and calculate our credit rating during our sleeping time. When we die after living for a biblical age of 900 or more years we will have what's left of our brains placed in jars for eternity. These brains will live on in an imaginary dreamworld.
Delete