Away

Olive drab masses

Endless, nameless


Choke on colourless commands


As they stem the silver tides.

Mothers weep as their flowers wilt


Sergeants smile when asked of guilt


“All those boys knew that they’d signed to serve


 so all those cowards got what they deserved”




Safety’s luxuries a stranger seldom met


By fresh faced boys too scared to be upset
Put up in arms when so many have no arms left


Don’t forget to forget Harry


He’s casually, your casualty


The unmarked bereft.

Still the grinning towers of death 


Give contorted greets and winks


To poor penny dreadful boys


Who linger on sanity’s thinning brink

Resplendent in their patchwork green


on grey days, so morbidly obscene


Condemned waiting on a land of scars


Caught between boyhood and its capars




Dressed up so proud, could war be any absurder?
Dressing up so Pretty, signing up for murder

Even beggars can’t be choosers


But they’re begging to be chosen


To join regiments of resentment


And greet steel relief half frozen



Bloated generals grin as they recruit


”What is fodder in exchange for loot? 


Its money that makes the world spin around


And he’s just another boy never to be found”

Hollowed bastions stained with glistening crimson guilt

Housing greedy blinded generals with remorseless deciding powers


Over fractious factions with their man-hoods, man-built


Whom scratch their skins to cleanse the sins of humanity devoured.


All but two figures of opposing purity



Concealed in their childhood havens



Watch the wounds of their pretend friends



Get picked clean by starving ravens 





Before ruthless iron truces kept them apart



Now only metres of bitter lifeless stone



The anonymity of bloodshed battle’s only art



Isolating brothers to fight one another, alone. 





Mass indoctrination a friend shaped reaper



Plying expiring clones with rare rationed rum



Faltered smiles disguise bodies ever weaker



Devoid of morals and to disease they succumb





Unknown to dear old rotten Ross



That he would never be laid to rest



He died clutching crutch and cross



But he never could leave blessed





Sentimentally censored letters



Offer the cruel pretence of escape



From the shrapnel torn skies



That beckon bullet hole heartache





Ricochet, ricochet, ricochet, ricochet.



And the silver spark pierces his head



Lordship rests; bed of barbed bracket



Replaced by a tramp of a man instead

The claims of this futile fight



Are indistinct of any class



Ending every stalemate night



For any who should pass



The contrast of imperial wealth



Has never been better illustrated


Than by this ceaseless stealth



Destroying what Vicky created


Sweet infants proud of daddy’s fairytales



Tightly seal and shut their ears



And then spend their tears



On those martyred without need or nails





But even as the boy-made gashes



Linear wounds on the landscape



Begin to bridge the chasm and lose shape



There are still dormant youth, never to escape



They were dead where they stood



Just as they will rot where they fell


It is cruel and yet understood


Why their deathly rest is their living hell.