Poetry: Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England
Beaumond Cross in Newark in Nottinghamshire
I remember the warmth of, and the rise
Of hardest stones, comfortable safety;
Sleeping at home, hidden from human eyes.
I remember the tapping of hammers
Through my grain, the boring of steel feathers;
Wedges cracking me from my parent stone.
I remember the steel shaping of me,
The upside-down placing – they spoiled thee –
They gave me open wounds and bored my feet.
The rains pouring in to my poorly stone;
The trickles of water drips through my grain
And washed and turned my stone to dust again.
I remember, one day, I awakened
And three springs chuckled and sang to me
And the land laughed and I was welcomed.
I remember the fine Pleasure Gardens
And the long lines of allotment ‘veg’ parts
And the men and the horses with their carts.
I remember the rattle of steel tyres
On the smoo-thed, gra-nite, cobb-led stones
And the creak of many wooden cart bones.
I remember the turn of the century;
The death of Queen Victoria
And men, in khaki, from the Boer War..
I remember the volunteers for war,
Nineteen fourteen – the khaki ‘serge’ again;
Later a bier for a dead Captain.
Peace. Politicians easy platitudes,
“Remember all of our ‘Glorious Dead’.”
No legs, no face, no arms, no bread, no head.
National Strike – men and boys all backlit,
Speak-easy of Jarrow and marching lads,
Out-of-time, out-of-home, no benefit.
Picasso, Guernica, bombers and blood,
Sirens whining hell of black-crossed aircraft
Practicing their warcraft – freedom and flood.
Soon the tramping of voluntary men
Clad in khaki and black ammunition boots,
Crunching on the cobbles, striking sparks then.
Bloody wagons and white-faced clowns
Without makeup, no fake laughs only frowns,
Out of Dunkirk they came, wounded, living.
A bomber came and hit a factory;
The funeral courtege meandered passed –
Civvies and an old ‘Ell Dee Vee’.
Whispers and bits of talk, the cities bombed
And a new verb, ‘to Coventrate’ – poor sods –
Flattened and fire-stormed and many dead bods.
Mulberry and Pluto went to sea, in
Blanched, concrete caissons and towed blockships,
All off to Normandy – June six, to win.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki deny
Them their data as tens of thousands die –
The testbeds for future nuclear warfare.
The war cools and no one talks war or fall,
Technological advances threaten all
With mutually assured destruction.
It is a MAD, mad world; the god’s jester
Shapes tables for talks – round, rectangular –
Too square for many and not enough SALT.
I remember moving, torn from my land,
One hundred and forty feet to the park –
Stand with kids and teens and the odd skylark.
Potterdyke, I hear, will move me again
One hundred and eighty feet ‘Round the Bend’
And stand me on my land; another trend.
What of now and the many ‘whens’ that went?
I wear this weatherworn, shabby tent
And serve man’s need to connect, with the earth.
The following poems are for the Poppy Appeal book for next year (2007) and were written during the collections 28th October to 11th November 2006 inclusive.
I did a total of 141 hours of collecting over this period and had many hours of sitting with my notebook and people watching.
Poppy Appeal 01
“I’ve already got a poppy,” they say
Or they say nothing and look away.
Hours spent people-watching,
The smiling greeting,
A few words communicate –
Coins in the box advocate
A course of action
Against one of inaction:
To remember the fallen
And comfort those who remain.
Music, the crotchety refrain,
Quavers and other notes taken.
“I’ve got a poppy,
I bought it last week!”
Some say and nod and smile
And hurry away.
Others open their purse or wallet
And empty it into my tin
And ask nothing in return.
The rest, the other 80%,
May be provoked or prodded
Into putting a few pence in my tin.
“Can I have a poppy?”
“Can I have a flower?”
And they tug at a parent
Or gran or grandad.
In that pull or push
A little force, barely felt,
That urges a little payment
To please a child –
One who barely understands
The world of their life
And retains their innocence
And happy inexperience.
Perhaps the parent knows
Someone in the forces
Or has relatives who fought,
Perhaps they have felt
The grief of a loved one’s death.
Perhaps they pay to quiet
A thought more than a noisy child.
She says, “Got one in the car!”
Glares and walks away
As though to say,
‘How dare you ask me to pay’.
One poppy, one poppy only,
“Wear it with pride?”
Wear it to show you’ve paid.
One poppy to last a year
Or will it last two or three
And show you’ve ‘paid’?
Ask the man with ribbons
On his chest what he did;
If you are wise you’ll hear
Him say, “I survived.”
He bought his poppies
Serving his Country
And continues to serve
Them, all his days.
In memory, he remembers
The days of youth,
The days of strength
When youth grew up
And a survivor blossomed.
He picked his poppies
On the battlefields
Of The Great War
And Afghanistan and Iraq.
Year by year we stand
And fight for our country;
Politics by other means?
A failure to talk,
A failure to understand,
Political failure.
So now we fight
In Iraq and Afghanistan –
Lessons of Mesopotamia
Forgotten like the 19th century
Battles with the Pathan.
The public think that we
Remember two world wars only,
But we remember all wars
Where our volunteers are.
We care for ten and a half million people,
The warriors and their families:
One sixth of the population –
How many do you care for?
One poppy, one poppy, one little poppy,
“I bought one last week…”
Poppy Appeal 02
A smile and a greeting
One comrade to another,
Perhaps an old man,
Perhaps a young man,
Both with too many memories.
Women too now with equality
And all equal memories too.
The bangs of bonfire night
And childrens’ happy voices
And I remember other noises
And the loss of boys
Who were barely men.
Poppy Appeal 03
In between the ones who buy one
Cheap poppy in the two weeks
Are those who fill my tin
And ask nothing in return;
They give and give again
These young and old.
Perhaps they understand
That military persons
Stand on the line of battle
Because of some, safe, politician.
Those of you who
Despise the fighters
Would do better
To fight
Those who start wars:
You can stand for Parliament
Or vote for someone else.
Poppy Appeal 04: Duty of Care
The Duty of Care,
Mister Blair:
The Social Contract
Between the United Kingdom
And those who fight
For Queen and Country.
What price care?
Mr Blair.
Now you’ve destroyed
The support services
And military hospitals:
What price Duty of Care?
Mister Blair.
Join the queue
And wait in line
With those who did not volunteer,
Wait with the cowards
And the layabouts,
Wait with those who
Despise the fighter –
Our minds go unrepaired
And injuries are untended.
Cut back on Forces spending
But you still want us –
To fight and die for you.
What price Duty of Care?
Mister Blair?
Mister Blair in uniform:
No flak jacket, no body armour,
A gun but no ammunition.
Welcome to Blair’s Army
And please get shot,
Then you too can enjoy
Your Duty of Care,
Mister Blair.
Poppy Appeal 05: Amalgamation
The Queen’s Tank Corps
Stands on its plinth
In Catterick Camp:
Once a place of training
And now a housing estate –
Accommodation for
Prisoners or immigrants.
Where once soldiers trained
And left to join regiments;
Where ‘tanks’ lived in garages
And rumbled along roads
And across country,
It is all built on.
Regiments amalgamated
As successive Governments
Cut back on budgets.
When they ran out of regiments,
They amalgamated squadrons
And troops and platoons.
Cut back on support services:
No more medics,
No more engineers,
No more artillery,
No more ammunition,
No more armour,
No more flak jackets,
No more fighters.
Fight the Government’s wars
As untrained yobs
Exchanging rocks and insults.
The Government’s Budget is satisfied,
Close the prisons and put them to war.
The Queen’s Tank Corps
Rusts on its plinth:
No engine,
No maintenance,
No breech,
No block,
Tracks rusted solid
And a pipe in place of a gun.
Everything is amalgamated,
Everything is closed,
The account books are shut
And there are no soldiers.
The Government still starts wars
And Group 4’s ‘volunteers’
March from their prisons,
Fulfilling a Social Contract?
Poppy Appeal 06: the Chieftain tank
Lay the track, lay the track-link,
Rattling, noisy, cloud of dust,
Metallic bang, cloud of rust,
Bazooka plates and towing hooks
Knocking, steel, hooking eyes,
Slack tow ropes and ringing oil cans
Hidden beneath diesel smoke.
This is the Chieftain tank,
Which draws envious looks
From those who are not wise
And who think that this
Is the fighting battle station.
Such thoughts evoke
Misunderstandings
Of what these things
Were conceived for –
Going off to war.
Why do I feel guilty because of the death of a fly?
Last night I watched you struggling
To break through the window glass
And I watched you freezing,
Dying, as all things pass.
Last night I could have moved you inside
To die, perhaps, but warm, at least,
And cared for at your last bedside,
As your life went and you were released.
Last night I rejoiced at your dance
As you failed to find the open window,
Your frenzied need of my warm entrance;
Now you are dead, who shall tell your widow?
Is the life of a fly to be so worthless?
I did not kill you, did I?
Yet I stood by and watched you die, hopeless.
Why do I feel guilty because of the death of a fly?
Night Out
I remember my old, fool-hardy ways
In those far, far away, much younger days
When alcohol fuelled my uncontrolled mind
And thoughts of many things fun things, all defined
As escapades in the dark of the night –
No respect to prevent my poor delight.
I remember when alcohol filled my fists
And smashing my skin and bone into bits
And carrying knives in my best black suits
Or my well-polished, black, knee-high boots
And covered up a lack of confidence;
Shouting and laughing my noise cadence
For all others to hear and to compare
With all those sol-di-ers they have seen there.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
“Its all for the public good,” they all allege,
“Read these, our words, watch and hear our pledge –
Information for all our commuters,”
These granite words pour from their computers.
Sell more sheets of the public tabloid press,
Lies, nonsense and rubbish with no redress –
Lives are destroyed, “All for the public good,”
This is all that is ever understood.
Selling the media, selling papers,
Build them up and give them status on Tuesday,
Sneak around and dash them down by Friday.
Then write and write, secondhand invaders,
Third-hand and nothing-known-hand creators
And old, waste, copies wrap fish on Sunday.
Human Rights
My Rights, my Rights, my Rights!
“Stuff your rights” – “Go to hell” –
“I’m all right, Jack.”
4 and 20 lawyers all baked in pi
R squared arguments and a pastry bell
That fails to ring – no sound, no death knell.
Eager cacophony of media rights –
“It’s all in the public interest” –
Sell papers, sell more papers.
Truth? Who cares about truth?
Stir the faceless public –
Buy our news, buy our ‘truth’.
Everyone’s got rights so sod you
Because I’m OK and I don’t care
About you or you or you or You!
“I’m all right, Jack.”
&
Know this and step down into chaos,
We all have rights –
Political word merchants
Selling lies and dreams –
Next election only as far as we see,
“Let’s enact an Act and give all rights.”
Rush it through, no thought to consequence.
Give them rights!
Education? They know it all – vote for us!
Got 9 ‘A’ Levels, can’t read or write,
School must get cash, boost the pass rate.
I can’t get a job, its my right to work.
A degree in Serbo-Croat literature
And now you want £100k a year –
Instant education: one politic statistician.
So many passes – so many pounds –
So many in remedial rounds.
We’ve got rights: free education and health,
As long as you accept the ‘NICE’ world
And the pre-packaged sound-bite,
Political-speak for ’How much can you afford?’
Insurances and pensions and wealth
All thrown into the furnace of that accord.
We’ve got rights: to all our beliefs,
Bring back the Druids and virgin sacrifice,
Bring back the sun god and rip living hearts,
Bring back the pyramids and let each build their own.
We’ve got rights: to bring another disabled
Child into the world, ‘It’s my right to bear a child.’
And pass your disability onto one unborn?
HSE and Nanny State where are you?
Must we wait until we are all disabled?
We’ve got rights: I’ll wear what I want –
Lady fire fighters wearing burkahs?
Self-immolation may occur
But the HSE…
Ahh, now that’s another right.