THEME POETRY
AUGUST 2021 = WAR
HIROSHIMA
Kassie Runyan
United States
mother mother
where have you gone?
we couldn’t find you
as it rained bombs
your children need a hug
but there is none
i scan for your face
and ask the nun
no one has seen you
but it still rains bombs
father father
where have you gone?
you went off on a ship
and now they’ve won
we haven’t heard from you
even now that it’s done
how do we reach you
without a gong
oh father, we need you
but you are long gone
sister sister
where have you gone?
i left to steal rice
but there was none
now i return
to the ghost of a small one
hope you found a friend
or a rock to climb on
but deep down i know
you left with the dawn
brother brother
where have you gone
there is no one left
for you to show brawn
they’ve left you alone
only memories of bygone
is it worth the energy now
to keep fighting on
or drift to sleep for the last time
leaving only a yawn
__________
Mel Haagman
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/girlontheedge90
I want to understand you,
What has led you to be here?
I want to hear your story,
What you crave and what you fear.
I want to know about your choices,
What you’ve accepted and declined,
I want to know about your future,
And what you hope to find.
I want to know about your influences,
Through the life that you now live,
I want to know if you hold a grudge,
Or can you easily forgive?
I want to learn your mind-set,
The core values that you hold,
And how you keep so grounded,
With the beliefs that you’ve been told.
I want to show you respect and trust,
To be open and to share,
And I will cast no judgement,
In this space, I’ll show you care.
__________
ROCKET ATTACK
Douglas V. Miller
United States
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000788881080
Deep green canopy
daytime dark
much too thick
for walks in the park.
Far off whistle
duck and cover
butts clinching tight
here comes another.
The earth pukes death
guts slam into throat
chances of rescue
seeming mighty remote.
Shrapnel skewers area
just above ground
chopped into salad
fifty feet all around.
Five-minute bombardment
feels like an hour
raining bloody death
from some remote dark tower.
Thwap, thwap, thwap,
sound of rotors in flight
throwing hellfire down
on that remote site.
Fires light up
far in the brush
got to get out
damn big rush.
Bag up the bodies
piece together the dead
patch up the wounded
count all the heads.
Airlifted out,
another distant hill
just send Uncle Sam
this blood-written bill.
__________
BENNY’S LAST FLIGHT HOME
Judy DeCroce
United States
https://www.linkedin.com/in/judydecroce
Abandoned letters in an attic darkroom,
ordinary on thin blue paper,
air mails folded and refolded, stacking his name
as death slips away organized in a box.
All of us, waiting, hoping, still looking,
wondering where, between those scrawly lines,
he flies and a reverse of good-byes,
gone too.
(for Pilot Captain Benjamin Radzevich,
plane crash into the Atlantic, c.1945,
returning home from the war in Europe.)
__________
SCOOPED OUT
Marion Lougheed
Canada
https://www.facebook.com/marionstales
https://twitter.com/marionlougheed
coconut husk milk and fruit devoured
hungry thirsty people took what they could get and now
a husk like burnt-out cars discarded on the roadside
the inside raw blackened dull exposed
to elements both human and of earth and sea and sky
once the husk of car or fruit is cleaned of all its useful inner parts
it's cast aside unwanted undesired
what use what good what value in
a shell without a heartbeat?
__________
SLAVE TOTHE SYSTEM
Amy Turberville
United States
@theangelinthedarkness
“Trust the government,”
They say, “It’s never led us astray.”
Genocidal thoughts, guns & bombs betray,
“Just good business,”
They utter in dismay.
Commit our sins now,
Later for forgiveness we’ll pray.
Laughing like jackals
as we wake up everyday
to break our backs.
Like a bunch of ants
summoned by the queen
to go on the attack.
“Freedom isn’t free,”
They proclaim in unison with tact.
—Freedom isn’t free and neither are we.
_________
FATE SEALS THE DEAL
Jessica Palmquist
United States
A boiling, fiery inferno
Shines red into the air.
The suffocating, grueling ruby
Lines the brick road to scare.
Begging and pleading in much haste,
The devil screams within.
My soul cries out to God above
Send Legion to the pigs.
Engulfing flames fill my heart
I scream tears of hate
Burning, turning to ash and soot,
Too late to change my fate.
She cut the cord, my life is done,
The light turning black.
I see the other side before me
No more turning back.
__________
THE PITY OF WAR
Jacquee Storozynski-Toll
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/jacquee.storozynski
Dried, gnarled fingers of a blasted tree
Reach out like a skeleton’s hand.
Imploring and supplicating to end
The dead and dying wasteland.
No blessings of gold on these boots
Only the torture of slime and mud
Agonized screams and frothing blood.
Bodies drowning, deep despair
Crushed and rotting in chlorine air.
Hands grasping, clenching in muddy clay.
The will to live another day.
Did men, like trees, exist to end like?
A branch protrudes like dead men’s bones.
Bowed down by the weight of screams & moans.
Sun’s rays warm them, but they cannot grow
Hands on shoulders. Blindfolded, slow.
Eyes that now will never see, the marching to eternity.
The hopes of youth too gone to waste.
A white stone. ‘ Unknown.’ Marks this place.
Shattered bodies, distorted, bent.
They die exhausted, disfigured, spent.
‘God knows’ it says, the unknown name
Of these anonymous men who came.
They couldn’t wait. Their duty called
Now shadowy figures, slump appalled.
All they want is one tomorrow.
It will not come amidst this sorrow.
He was a man. Now molten clay.
No Adam rises from earth this day.
The leaves, drop like tears. No marching band.
Just a blasted tree in a No Man’s Land.
__________
TO THE ISLE OF PELELIU
Hilary McRee Flanery
United States
In the Fall
Of forty-four
Our country battled
In a war.
A young boy went –
The proud the few
To the isle
Of Peleliu.
On his right
His buddies killed
On his left
More blood was spilled.
A young boy went –
The proud the few
To the isle
Of Peleliu.
His mind he steadied
Not to cry
Then metal shrapnel
Sliced his eye.
A young boy went –
The proud the few
To the isle
Of Peleliu.
Writhing pain
His eye red-hot
A smiling medic,
Then was shot.
A young boy went –
The proud the few
To the isle
Of Peleliu.
Under his back
Only the earth
In front to his sides
Souls of great worth.
A young boy went –
The proud the few
To the isle
Of Peleliu.
The boy was wounded
Left eye blind
Back to the states
Pray, paint and remind…
Just yesterday killed,
The proud the few -
May all souls rest
On…Peleliu.
__________
ARMCHAIR GENERALS
Jenean McBrearty
Oh, the criticisms of do-gooders!
How virtuous they are
from the comfort of their “communities.”
Close knit, wine savvy,
they speak of their ‘esthetic’
when choosing a baby crib,
ignoring the graffiti of the ghetto.
Lives lived on social media,
unable to expand to historical dimensions,
straight-jacket ‘shoulds’
safe in gated neighborhoods
while demanding rehab for the downtrodden,
without seeing the similarities.
Their children have silly names
that won’t look good on a headstone,
(funerals are solemn events, not giggle-fests),
and pontificate on morality
without ever dodging bullets
in Chicago or Iraq.
War is just another word for dying.
in your own blood and feces, but with nobility.
A poor man’s claim to greatness?
A culture war —bullets and needles,
and dying in someone else’s pathology.
Your memorial not a medal but a riot.
__________
WAR CORRESPONDENCE
Bob McAfee
United States
My son, my son, the war has begun.
Tell me where will you sleep tonight.
On the ground, on the ground,
in a tent on the ground
after marching all day with my crew.
My son, my son, you are so very young.
Tell me where will you sleep tonight.
On the ground, on the ground,
with a blanket I found
in a house near a farm in Shiloh.
My son, my son, you do us proud.
Tell me where will you sleep tonight.
On the ground, on the ground,
hear the cannonball’s sound
as I sleep in the Tennessee dew.
My son, my son, has the battle been won?
Tell me where will you sleep tonight.
On the ground, on the ground,
I hear the drums pound
as we ready to charge in the morrow.
My son, my son, keep your head down.
Tell me where will you sleep tonight.
On the ground, on the ground,
is where I’ve been downed,
a musket ball reaming me through.
__________
OF AMERICA ALL THESE MEDALS SING
RC James
United States
Why'd he do it,
jumped on the grenade,
could've hollered
told them guys to scatter?
Hide an' seek,
no, let's play red light.
Bird, look at it, small;
man, it's warm, feel it.
Can't fly, can we keep it?
We can fix it, yeah,
just put a splint on the wing,
Popsicle stick, dirty,
wash it off.
Clean the blood off,
not so rough, here, this blanket,
soft enough, ma don't know,
but it's all right.
Danny jumped on it,
nobody knew what was happening;
everybody rolled, stand up, get hit.
Damn machine gun out there,
explosion, right under Danny.
Moaning, can't breathe.
Guys all around him.
Mexican Frank, never got hurt,
only time he wasn't laughing
was when he was fighting.
Danny he was like Frank,
always smiling.
That Saturday, Sandy, he said,
we're gonna lose, be damned
if we didn't, them guys played ball
worse than old ladies and we lost.
Sandy said it, Bastards!
Danny flipped a coin at the board,
lost, and they took him out
to the base that morning.
He could've picked it up
and heaved it, why?
Old woman teacher, she threw
that damn chalk like lightning,
hit the kid on the head.
Everybody shut up,
she was a little crazy, tense,
laughed, but no noise came out.
That ranch, Fernandez woman,
small, black hair, sliver of it
hanging down, almond eyes, deep.
Picking up the mail, walking slow,
back to the house, stops, slumps,
sobbing, walks arms at sides.
Letters drop to the ground,
she stops outside the door,
leans against it, crying,
pigs grunting for food.
Copter flattening out the grass,
left big patch, noise drowned out
by guns.
Us kids 'd roll in them fields,
wrestling, farmer mad as hell,
had to cut it by hand, ha,
heavin' apples at him on the run.
Some girl named Breta,
Danny talked real soft about her,
hardly make out what he was sayin.'
Summer camp talking real low,
scratching screen window,
watching for the counselor,
flashlight, watch it.
Danny on his bunk
dreaming about his horse,
Danny in the field
dreaming about his ranch,
Danny in that hut,
Danny
dreaming.
__________
STEEL
Genevieve Ray
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/GenevieveRayPoet/
Ever turning steel,
against muck-ridden,
rubbery churning.
The monsters of the maniacal,
eat the spaces that were so green.
Ever moving steel,
revolves to meet,
a barrel of fresh artillery.
A barrage of sound and smell,
cutting through communities.
Over heated steel,
powered by promises,
of a faulty power play.
A whole generation lost,
from World War back to Greeks.
Over heated steel,
when technology overtakes,
the evolution of humanity.
Beating my breast as Shaka,
lifting my zweihander for German ancestry.
Over to ever drawing steel.
My history has the auspices,
of love before the sword.
Pacifist is not my blood,
it is the iron of unchaining,
of my ancestors from civil horror,
the belief of "we will be free".
__________
MOTHER
Rose Mary Boehm
Peru
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR9fygcz_kL4LGuYcvmC8lQ
https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
I
Mother holds my hand.
I am trying to keep pace.
Perhaps I’ll have thick brown silk stockings
one day, just like hers, and big brown shoes.
Why is her skirt so long?
II
Behind us were men in grey uniforms who forced
us uphill in the street where we lived.
Mother squashed my fingers until they hurt
in her big hands and until I wriggled and
pulled my hand from hers, sliding sideways
and hiding in a doorway where I watched
hundreds of hurried legs trample by.
III
I stare at the wall with hundreds of lists
of names of those who went missing, the ones
who never checked in again to be registered
by the bureaucratic processes which were never lost.
My finger flies across the papers helping my eyes
to look for the G’s.
My mother's name is not there.
__________
HIS LIMBO SOLILOQUY
Carl “Papa” Palmer
United States
Actually, I like lock-down. I already was before COVID anyway,
but now I’ve got my privacy. No family feeling forced to visit
or hold vigil in my netherworld, he confides through the phone.
Both of us former Army soldiers placing us on common ground
made introductions easier with the usual “where were we when”
comparisons of duty assignments all military members embrace.
Though sharing multiple telephone calls these past seven months
since my assignment to be his companion as a hospice volunteer,
I have yet to meet him face-to-face due to pandemic restrictions.
Using his bedside number at the nursing home I can call anytime,
not worry about visiting hours, ask if he’s busy, got time to talk.
His answer’s most always the same, Just busy here being alone,
too close to death to complain. Clicking me to speaker he begins
what he calls “me-memories from a time when when was when.”
Mostly musing of being anywhere but there, lost in an actual place,
blurring “what was with what is” behind and in front of his shadow,
recalling dreams as a younger man, of a future in past perfect tense.
And times talking of present times from his no man’s land outpost,
All day's end as they begin in purgatory, today recopying yesterday,
cared for by hosts of faceless masked angels not letting me die alone.
Forgive me only thinking of myself, I just need you to hear I’m here.
Inside I’m your age, the two of us sharing a brew at the NCO club,
years ago, and oceans away, comrades-in-arms talking of our day.
To me he’s the sergeant with permanent change of station orders
in transition for his final mission, ending his time on active service,
in hopes his God is religious and his terminal assignment is good.
__________
THE BLUE GOD
Joan McNerney
The blue god of war
is so strong
he can twist trees
with the tip of his tongue.
You better not defy him
scream at him
lie to him.
He'll explode and beat
the hell out of you.
He lives on nothing
will die for nothing
makes us children
shivering all night
crying in empty winds
turning our tears to ice.
The blue god of war
is so strong
northern winds bow
to his will.
He doesn't dig
your moaning
and groaning.
You better shut up or he'll
make mincemeat out of you.
He laughs at everything
has respect for nothing
makes us afraid to fight
when he spits in our faces
turning our tears to ice.
So we watch in silence
waiting for the coming light
when he will hold us
in his burning hands
and we will be born twice
once by fire
once by ice.
__________
MARC ANTONY AND ME
Neal Whitman
United States
Aka Tin Whealman
Anagram poet of Glenelg, Scotland
Two weary veterans,
we share battle stories
and rub rust off dented armor.
His war in the mist of time.
My war in our time.
Both shed too many years.
What’s the noise?
The star is fallen ... strike me dead
Withered is the garland ... the Earth doth melt.
Beneath the visiting moon
the odds are gone.
Give me some wine.
Like old battered turtles
we now salute no flag,
true Earthlings. Cheers!
A door opened
and blew out the candle.
Where did the flame go?
__________
THE WAR YEARS
Jacalyn Shelley
United States
I spent most of the war preoccupied with the study of ballet and the habit of watching on the Nightly News soldiers drag body bags out of the jungle, heave them onto helicopters. Then I’d settle into bed humming, with my transistor radio and Marvin Gaye singing What’s Going On? The answer was to escalate, and my boyfriend registered with the Selective Service, a lottery that chose more and more men to go to war. I began to study the laws of probability and the cartography of Canada. Vivid to me was the blood stain of a Marine’s suicide on my college library floor. Vivid to me were the stories of enlisted men, who stood randomly on the right side of a room and went to Ankara or Ramstein while their buddies were sent to Da Nang or Camranh Bay. I should have studied the cartography of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. When I was small, I studied Germany, that half a country my war-weary father helped to liberate. Now I touch the shoulder of my husband’s flight suit at the back of the closet, listen to his stories of how the supply of tetracycline for STDs would always run out, how he stitched up Viet Cong prisoners only for them to be sent back across the perimeter. His voice hesitates as he recalls recording fairy tales on cassette tapes for his children. His eyes tear like my father’s.
__________
FLYING OVER VIETNAM 1974
L.J. Carber
Written while teaching in Cambodia in 1973-74
I flew,
a modern man in a steel bird,
with all the arrogance of
ancient Icarus, but my wings
did not melt nor I swoon.
I flew high, very, very high
Over Asian lands and homes,
And below me, very, very far
Down where the bombs fell
Like the rains of hell—
I saw the face of the moon.
__________
SAIGON PLATFORM MAN
Jimmy Pappas
United States
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8265313.Jimmy_Pappas
He weaved across the street
dodging in and out of motorbikes
like a broken-field runner
as he pushed his rolling platform
with a wooden block in each hand.
His legless torso rested on the dolly,
the kind of equipment acquired
from an American military base.
Whoa, papa-san, be careful.
I spread my arms out and pointed
my legs pretending to be a surfer
to show my amazement at how
he crossed a packed street with such ease.
He laughed as he always did
when he saw me,
clueless, I'm sure,
to what I was imitating.
He made his living shining shoes.
I was a regular customer now,
not that I cared about my boots,
but I always enjoyed our meetings.
I towered over him as I stood on the sidewalk
while he worked as quickly as possible.
When I looked up, I noticed the stares
of the Vietnamese people riding by.
None of them smiled back at me.
I looked down at my feet and understood.
I saw myself as they saw me
with my M-16 and baggy fatigues
and a horribly wounded veteran soldier
groveling at my feet.
When I handed the man a quarter,
he grabbed my arm
and kissed my hand.
__________
COFFEE
Trevor Harrison
United Kingdom
https://www.instagram.com/SoberPirate3218/
The dregs swill against my lips, a last taste of Brazil
They are acrimonious and grainy, like gunpowder
I want to roll the grit between my fingers-
Soak into each other in mutual, amiable osmosis
And so combined, evaporate
I fling my mug towards the primus stove
The flame spits and crackles; a fusillade
George says he will write his grandmother
Harry nods, but his eyes are back in Dublin
How I wish I could take them with me
Therein, reduced to molecules of a tired man
I could merge with the haze; I am smoke, I am
The sky scratched by shell-trails, blue, I am
The soft rains that fall after the dying is done
I am the blackbird song at daybreak
Overhead, I can see them all; erstwhile brothers
Crouched in the deep tattoos we gouged here
Some lay in lines, boots crossed, asleep or dead
Mud is etched into Gaia’s wrinkles, and our own
Precious little light in Tartarus
How I wish I could swoop down, a bright Gabriel
And kiss each man atop his head! – absent Christ
I would be His regent, offering infinite love –
To take each man against my breast, and whisper:
“You shall go home.”
__________
I AM AT WAR
Dr Barnali Sikder
India
https://www.instagram.com/vibgyor_barnu/
Yes, I am at war.
At war with my guilt,
Guilt of not being able to protect my soul from the world of hatred .
Hate waves smashing my door
Making the hardest sound
Pushing me towards realising the cruelty of disbelief.
Here love is melted down in the extreme heat of suffocating truth.
The unfathomable clash of love and disbelief germinate an unbelievable reality , where hatred is truth and truth is hatred.
Truest wishes for those who are being killed but still alive .
Their disabled soul conspire with those who dream of continuing this hatred to achieve a sublime world ,
Where soul is dead, love is raped , humanity is burned into ashes .
Misinterpreted emotions howl
and drag these infected souls to the threshold of a new holocaust.
The constant cacophony is tearing my eardrums.
Now, its bleeding like hell.
The red fluid is floating around my neck ...stopping me breath.
Strangulating my dreams to bloom like Frangipani,
Encapsulating my fragrance in a bottle tightening its cork.
I tried to escape but this glass wall is so strong that ,with every hard smash on it I bounce back to the centre.
My run between the centre and the periphery makes me realise the invisibility of my central existence
Where-
I am choked to death.
I am at war .
Yes, I am at war .
__________
INNOCENT WARRIORS
Prema Murugan
India
Children, their childhood lose liberty,
while battling their war against poverty.
Mercilessly, innocence clad in maturity.
Becomes rude and blameworthy
poor children's destiny.
These helpless angels toil hard,
with deep cut wounds on body and mind .
Enforced to severe struggles, just to exist,
They hardly make their ends meet.
It's mandatory, if they need to arise
have to live through all adversities,
their prolonged pitiful state in bind.
Forced to live in despair,
killed are their desires.
Despite that everyday they respire,
grasping every breath with new aspires.
Like every little sweetheart,
they too dream, obviously bright.
Expect their sky in full spectrum paint
radiating sparkling luminous light
that might in some way blind their plight.
At times bold enough to break the barriers,
ignore the norms of ruthless social orders.
Self taught with practical lessons of life.
they withstand like a warrior.
Fearlessly standing over
the sharp edge, some do survive,
crawl hard to escalate in their career.
Their smile sighs to lose of innocence,
dull gleam in eyes, anyone can sense.
Sometimes when left with no choice,
surrender to their ill fate, their mischance.
Though unwilling, to weird beat they dance
Stinging sorrows then pricks
through their scathing glance.
Deep inside, the suppressed child weeps,
skin delicate peels, at times profusely bleeds
tolerating for somebody's dark deeds.
I utterly beg, lets hear un-uttered pleads.
let's not deafen our ear, lets pay heed.
let's raise voice for these voiceless breed,
before they succumb to non healing scars.
Tongue tied they are, muted sufferers,
imprisoned they are, behind unseen bars.
__________
CODA
Marsha Warren Mittman
United States
http://www.thenextfoundation.org/
Beware paper soldiers
Marching to the sound
Of their own mournful drums
Their cacophony harbingers
Of dread terrors unleashed
Masquerading as symphonies
Whilst harmonies are destroyed
And peace instruments mangled
Until worldwide music
Can no longer be heard…
__________
LIKE LARKS
Abigail Elizabeth Ottley
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/abigailelizabethottley
(For Coprporal A. Polkinghorne, D Company 2/6 Regiment in Mesopotamia
Based on a letter to Harry Ritch on 1st January 1918)
Dear Mr Ritch, I am getting on alright.
I did not see the New Year come
but slept in, snug and dry, and warm as I could get.
Our poor tents have been flooded, see.
A foot of mud we’ve slept in, nearly
sometimes with the water to our knees.
Remember me, please, to all at home.
The Bible class is small these days, I guess.
But, if you could see us, and you brought
your camera, you could take some comic views:
all of us, as like as not, quite lagged in mud, soaked through.
The rain’s not like the rain back home. It comes in bucketfuls.
Oh Mr Rich, make no mistake
out here we do see life.
Our Christmas here was quiet enough
as it must have been for those at home this year.
When dinner time came, they gave us skilly
which is a kind of mixed-up stew.
Cook mixed it up with something else —
though what the something was we never knew.
Still, we all look on the bright side here
and well you should have heard us Christmas Day.
We sat in our tents and sang like larks
a merry Christmas roundelay.
We Cornish lads, we sang and sang —
and we showed them the way.
__________
THE WORD
Pratibha Savani
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/pratibhapoetryart/
https://www.instagram.com/pratibhapoetryart/
a battle of wits
a battle of fists
a battle of the mind
it's all the same kind
a battle is a battle
we all lose that's for sure
but we don't need to choose
in love and war
if we use our minds
to think it right
we can recover and reclaim
and not play that GAME
learn from history's past mistakes
and before you know it
those battles are DEAD
and you find that solace
playing something else
like tic-tac-toe
and we automatically THRIVE and grow
in the ABSENCE of that word
that is now COMPLETELY
UNHEARD of
__________
THE TRAUMA OF WAR
King Komrabai Dumbuya
Sierra Leone
Nerve-wrecked by the war brutalities,
in reality, little stands before me.
Daily life faces stanzas of regrets.
My mouth is polka-dotted
with an elegiac ballads of morose.
Lamenting layers of lasting cicatrices
of a war-wounded widow.
The fists of war forcefully,
have pounded bitterness in my life.
And laid them barefoot
to the ulterior nature of irksomeness.
Trumping up contorts of defenseless pains
While tearing hells of unforgivable dams.
As the early morning sun ritual
ghastly casted on my face,
defenseless sobs constantly knocked the aisles of death
to take its rightful course,
caused by the brutalities of war.
While these conundrums resound in my eardrums
Pain exacerbates in me like a tsunami,
Posing a threat to my motherhood.
Jolted innocents open eyes wide,
Longing to see a sliver of hope.
Thinking of the grim reality,
my heart wails.
Gliding in my life,
are waves of trauma,
nerve-wrecked by ordeals
castrated by the war,
questioning my very existence.
_________
APOCALYPTIC DEMANDS
Michelle M. Mead
United States
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/michelle_m_mead
Not much left to say, I will retreat,
Nor time to say it in (incomplete),
With rubble strewn on barren streets,
Of the bluest earth we used to know,
So, no- maybe just a strained hello,
Or maybe a rushed kiss goodnight,
Before another flashing light,
Against our flesh as red as sin,
Climbs the walls of lives within,
As the final days of life begin,
A crooked fork stuck in my cheek,
Treacherous times that are so bleak,
A crooked house on crooked legs,
And every person is one who begs,
While crawling down amongst the dregs,
Apocalyptic mushroom cloud tattoos,
And baby bottles filled with booze,
Nothing left to pick or choose,
All broken glass and dried up land,
Alas, this is what ignorance demands,
This piece of flesh, these empty hands.
__________
BLUE RIDGES
Marianne Mersereau
United States
https://www.facebook.com/WildHoneyCreations
https://www.mariannemersereau.com/
The hills my father roamed in his life
were similar – rugged slopes rising
above lush valleys, and I wish to see them
before their scars – Wallens Ridge before
Daniel Boone, General Lee and Massey Coal,
Okinawa’s Kakazu before kamikazes,
banzais and suicide cliff dives.
I picture him as a child climbing
in Tennessee gathering holly for Christmas,
hunting squirrel and deer with his shotgun,
and years later crossing Conical Hill
carrying a fallen comrade, and a different
kind of weapon. I study the witnesses
on these ridges: palm, cherry, dogwood, cedar.
__________
STILL
D. R. James
United States
https://www.amazon.com/D.-R.-James/e/B00IW6KT3W
It all recurs for the maimed, how they remain,
or don’t, atop the plots of the buried. Those
who could do something table the question.
They relax in the rocker of their certainty,
a war, any war, an abstraction that walls off
the bursting specifics. A twenty-something friend
found he’d deployed to sort body parts. Arrayed,
they’d survive the fever sweeping a land we
could never know. Welcomed by the white-blue
atrium of a foreign sky, he’d prowl his perimeter
until his duty tapped him. Then the oven-sun
would relight his nightmare, the categories
of bone and flesh his production line. What
achievement could signal his success? What
dream in the meantime could relieve raw nerve?
The perfect tour would end when he was still
in one piece, a nation’s need ignoring the gore
behind the games, the horror nestling into
the still-living because still in one piece.
__________
RUMBLES OF WRATH!
Kathy Jo Bryant
United States
We cower inside
At the rumbles of wrath
Shrinking in fear's
Dread control
Why must we travel
This rambling path
And for trouble
Always be on patrol?
Well, it's a sure thing
That hate rules this world
Just look right and left
And you'll see
Upon every foe
Dark weapons are hurled
The human heart
Behaves evilly
A continual fight
'Twixt opposing sides
Has always held
Full sway
But there is hope
God will provide
An end to this mess
Some glad day!
__________
FARM BOY
Mike Ball
United States
https://twitter.com/whirred https://www.facebook.com/harrumph
Glenn reveled in the Burdizzo ball clamp
that emasculates bulls by crushing
vessels and sperm tubes with no cutting.
Encircling each ball in turn, squeezing
hard and quick. Poof, make a steer.
Bloodless transformation seems kind.
Among arcane pleasures of black kine
is hoisting hips onto the broad, wide body
of an Angus steer, bred for short legs and
table-like back. One could snooze there.
Weekends upcountry, we tended to Angus
and kept company with sincere lasses.
We played minor celebrity, college boys
not set sure for decades in cotton mills.
His future might bring country peace,
running the family ranch. But first
came duty to country during war.
Of course, he quit college to do that.
He quickly went extreme in Laos,
where our honorable government
swore that we never had troops.
He had shot only deer, turkey, squirrel.
Two years later when we met again,
He had to dig deep into our friendship
bag to speak…and only then after
three woman-shaped Michelobs.
As an NCO, corporal, on patrol, he
lived through a human wave assault.
Likely thousands, of Viet Cong
washed across the field at them.
They spewed machine gun and rifle
rounds down one wave, then the next.
Fifty some men in sweaty green
fatigues killed some, then more.
They got killed too. Many of his guys
were hit, including all ranking officers.
Killing more, then taking over his squad,
he ended up a couple ranks higher
Some attackers were only feet away.
He could have touched them, Instead,
he shot more…until the wave just stopped.
The Cong retrieved who knows how many.
It was over …sort of. The assault replays
in screams, smells and flashing sights.
Those shouting demons keep demanding
death for the platoon or even themselves.
No more laughs or grins. Only fitful
naps day or night and spoiled sleep.
Glen returned from the war…sort of.
He has no wounds that show.
__________
FREEDOM
Emecheta Christian
Nigeria
https://www.instagram.com/emechetachristian/
https://www.facebook.com/emechetac
Let’s fight abuse
Let’s fight misuse
We are not here to lose
We were not born fools
Let’s fight corruption
Let’s fight oppression
We must stay united like a legion
We must sanitize our nation
Let’s fight greed
Let’s fight misdeed
In wisdom, we must feed
In wise words, we must heed
Let’s fight terrorism
Let’s fight nepotism
In unity, we can eradicate antagonism
In love, we can outgrow tribalism.
__________
WARNING FROM THE WHEELCHAIR
Mark Hudson
United States
Back in eighth grade, we had school ditch-day,
and we ditched school to go to the Cubs game.
I was with a young kid my age when we strayed,
and came across a war veteran who’d been maimed.
Confined to a wheelchair for life from a fray,
he warned us not to join the military, or so he claimed.
I never intended to join the military, anyway,
but I remember that war veteran today, unnamed.
The kid I went to that baseball game with that day,
went on to a successful career, he was unashamed.
He was overseas when the tsunami swept him away,
a vacation in paradise was the thing to be blamed.
I thank you, Lord, that for today I’m still alive,
I hope to see those people in heaven who did not survive.
__________
TALES FROM THE DAMPSIDE
Ken Gosse
United States
https://www.facebook.com/ken.gosse/
There once was a dark, stormy knight
who needed to pause in each fight.
Superb valor and wit,
stamina infinite,
but large prostate and bladder finite.
__________
THE NAVY WIFE
Jane Fitzgerald
United States
https://www.facebook.com/JanesPoetry/
https://www.amazon.com/Jane-H.-Fitzgerald/e/B01MSW2FLO
She sat stone still
Staring at a blank screen
Its dullness reflected
How she felt inside
Too tired to move
She had been alone for months
His return a phantom ship
On the lost horizon
The only sounds in the still darkness
Were the hum of the refrigerator
And the occasional jet overhead
The children were finally asleep
The quiet washed over her
Like a precious gift
She could hardly bear to think
Of the baby bottles and dirty wash
Perpetually waiting for her
Demanding attention before
She could fall exhausted into
The bed meant for two
Only to be woken up
By screams from a hungry baby
She knew there would be isolation
When she eagerly pledged to him
It seemed so remote then
Reality struck with his first deployment
She had fought against it
Now she was resigned
Willing herself to conquer each day
Shouldering all responsibilities
Panicking with every phone call
Imagining the worst
A fearful draining existence
Each return was like a rebirth
Each departure a death
She suffered, but did not drown
Unknown physical and emotional strength
Emerged along with foreign courage
Transforming her into
The steadfast Navy wife
__________
WHAT LIES BENEATH
Lynn White
United Kingdom
https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/
https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com/
I dug up so many things
to create my garden
not only rocks
and pieces of slate
but tools from those who
had worked in this difficult land.
I built walls from the rocks
and edged my new pond in slate.
The tools became decorations
to tell the story of the land.
Then I found the tractor,
or so I thought,
a toy
that some child had played with
dreaming of flat land
with good soil.
Then I looked more closely
and saw it was a soldier
in the driving seat.
Not a tractor
then
but
some sort
of killing machine
I buried it back where it came from.
It seemed the best thing to do with it.
__________
I’LL BE SEEING YOU
Antoni Ooto
United States
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniooto
In the summer after the war
when we sit and plan
as others had
staring outward
at the lines of history before us
newly confronted with peace
quietly, we sing,
old songs of what was
forever looking into unknown places
over there…over here
this time,
hoping to build,
better than before
__________
THE WAR BETWEEN THE HANDS
William Wren
Canada
There was a body.
It had two hands,
a right and a left.
They went to war.
The hands became fists.
They started to fight.
In the fighting of fists
the body was bruised.
The body was winded
from all of the strikes.
The body was broken
and started to fall.
It dropped to its knees.
It fell to the ground.
It wasn’t enough.
Neither hand won.
Hands that were fists,
a left and a right,
knuckled with anger.
Each grabbed a knife.
They started to slash.
The body was cut.
It started to bleed.
It wasn’t enough.
The hands that were fists
continued to cut.
Both of them stabbed
straight to the heart.
The body was dying.
The body soon died.
The fists became hands.
The hands became dust.
__________
LAST WAR
Kaebetswe Qobolo, 14
Lesego Mahlakwana, 15
https://www.instagram.com/betswextee_/
You are the last war to end all wars
You are the biggest I've seen
You are the longest ever been
Turning left there are dead bodies on the battle grounds
Turning right all i hear is gun sounds
You are the last of them all
And shall all your enemies fall
Hope you conquer
And win this war
So tomorrow you shall rise
You're the last war to end all wars.
But the question still stands "what really happens in wars?"
Is it for peace?
Does it stay at ease
Or is it just for disturbing the peace?
We all ask...
We turn our backs on friends once we get back stabbed
Were all represented even standing from a distant,
In a flash we run trying to fight our enemies
We all rise and fall,
and we act like we're in walls.
__________
POPPIES
Agnieszka Filipek
Ireland
https://www.facebook.com/polmnieapoltobie
the sky cracks
rivers flow with blood
soldiers flood the earth
singing the lullaby
their weapons shining
like jewelry
and under their feet
anonymous bones
__________
I RISE UP
Sarfraz Ahmed
United Kingdom
https://twitter.com/Sarfraz76194745
https://www.instagram.com/sarfrazahmedpoet/
From the dust of history’s gaze,
From the hearts of encapsulated slaves,
Bound by shackles,
Tied to metal and stone,
That cut through skin and bone,
I rise up holding onto a wing and a prayer,
The tail ends of hope,
A sparkle that burns through the darkness,
Penetrates through the torched cries,
Of the caged bird,
From the gravel pits of history,
From the pain I endured time after time,
From the strength,
I found in the hearts,
In the comfort of strangers,
Those that have come and gone,
From the hope of another rising sun,
From the kiss of the phoenix,
And the belly of the dragon,
Dreams that used to exist,
I rise up,
I stand tall,
In the midst of history’s gaze,
I fly like a shadow,
Upon all those that did me wrong,
I rise up like fire,
I burn hard and I burn strong.
__________
