It breaks, wakes, makes, sakes, forsakes, takes
screams, shouts, cries and curses, curses and cries, and lies,
lies,
it’s all bleeding lies.
Words obscene, screamed and cried, he’s dead,
he’s dead,
the silly sod’s bloody died.
Questions and questions and no answers at all
and the sound of an echo bouncing off a wall
and the squelch of mud as a body falls
on top of a body
on top of another
the explosions, implosions, the groan and the fart
the tick, tock, tick last tock of a heart;
hysterical laughter disguising the weeping
and the insane chatter of the man who talks whilst he’s sleeping.
The praying, the preying and the shuffle of card playing
these are the sounds of the senseless slaying,
the whispered goodnight to a faraway daughter.
This is the sound of senseless slaughter
Bullets that whisper through the smog and the smoke
and the hush that heralds slowly the absence of hope
and the cough, and the wheeze and the swallow of phlegm
the song of a choir of terrified men
and the gentle ping, of metal piercing tin
and a helmet that falls to the ground
and the silent ‘o’ that is formed by the mouth
sounds the loudest of all
in this din.
And I spy with my little eye
half a million inventions of a new way to die
a man shot in the back as he’s taking a leak
and I see eye to eye on a dead mate’s cheek.
I spy something beginning with b
B is for blood, not crimson, nor red
but the colour of black that beats from the heart of the dead
and h is for hole right there in the hat
and p is for the poor bugger who couldn’t escape that
and o is for organs, not the Sunday church kind,
but organs like kidneys and intestines and hearts
and minds
and l is for limbs, hanging half off and half on
and h is for hero,
or i is for idiot shouting there’s a war to be won
d is for dead, and I wish to Christ it was me
just me,
lying there, bleeding out to the sea
and eye spy, just little I
something beginning with p
or perhaps with a g for Galipoli
that word that rhymes with almost nothing but unhappily.
Where the sound of a word breaks in mid breath
leaving only a silence to enjoin us in death,
silence and violence strange bed-fellows make
and climax in an orgasm too easily faked
We were asked to explore senses but where is the sense in this?
In imagining bodies in mud, blood and piss?
It just reminds me of how my cowardice ends like ice in my soul
and of how living in peace makes me feel less than whole.
But I wouldn’t have survived life in a trench
assailed by the stench
of sweat and fear,
tasting only the terror on my tongue
of where God had gone
and what Man had become
and if I could not have brushed my mother’s cheek.....
© Norman Warwick
Just Poets
