What beauty comes of war
from all that’s black as blood
from damaged mind and broken bone
What beauty comes of war
What beauty comes of ugliness
from torment trapped in blinding light
from silver landscapes blasted white
What beauty comes of war
Yet how remembrance uses it
the flags and slow lament
with dignity and gratitude and scarlet sentiment
Is beauty in the orphan child
a mind insane
a lonesome soul
Is beauty in a life bereft
to live without a love
to sleep alone and cold
If yes a terrible beauty comes of war
But grim remembrance bares the truth
of beauty never seen
whilst only those with scars are proof
to those who’ve never been
Štimlje revisited (unseen casualties)
Travelling across open flatland toward Štimlje the ground begins to rise.
Driving on through the tight enclosed lanes of the town to the far side as if to leave,
a battered overgrown compound looms into view, its heavy mesh fences collapsing and dilapidated in parts.
This is Štimlje Mental Asylum. The patients are unable or unwilling to leave, they have been abandoned left to fend for themselves or die.
The staff have fled because this is a war zone.
Snow lays in muddy patches around about, stained with shit and blood.
A slug-like legless form drags itself through excrement seemingly going nowhere fast,
its insane leer and wolf-like howling splits the cold air, this thing is human.
Horror descends.
We continue systematically on foot, through unlit grey buildings and rooms, behind each door a shocking portal to another circle of hell.
Women, children, half animals, intermittent screeching barking and yelps.
Self harming, open wounds, and the gut wrenching stench of filth.
In one room no bigger than a single garage space, at least fifty naked forms stand silently shivering.
They stare out of hollow skulls straight through me as I stand silhouetted in the doorway.
They seem to be mostly men its hard to tell, their emaciated bodies look sexless.
Upon closer inspection there are a few women present, Jesus! What might have happened to them in here? Their hair is matted in clumps.
There were just four of us a small recce team we could do nothing we had nothing, we were staring into hell and were struck dumb by it.
We drove in Silence back to Pristina not one single fucking word.
I was strong, fit, able in mind and body. I was in my late thirties and this wasn’t my first war.
I got back to a quiet place and hid myself, I cried and shook like a pathetic child, big tough fucking soldier eh?
And sometimes that is how war fucks you, slowly. Either that or you get blown to shit.
Chopin is slowly stitching the night around me
he’s weaving the darkness to shutter my room,
As my eyes surrender to his Nocturne Moon.
The universe expands behind the veil of light,
in here the world breathes freely as only dead men might,
Without resistant fear, released into second sight.
Where Symphonies crescendos crash the stars asunder
and a million raining sparkle-lights flood to Seas of wonder.
Shimmering they roll toward my waking.
Tis true the tides do never wait advancement or retreat,
that even in this netherworld the laws of Earth repeat,
and cast me back un-rescued to my voyage incomplete.
There seems nothing more civilised than the management of savagery,
remote and air conditioned.
Once separated from its delivery by sail boats and oceans,
by wax seals and emissaries.
Now only satellites and microwaves disperse the shock waves.
Cobra delegates are traumatised in real time as targets fall,
their lattes cool as does their blood
but “Fair Trade” product keeps their conscience clear.
We on the other hand are tools of necessity,
clinically educated…cold as hollow points.
Through us their message flows like the bullet through the barrel,
the recoil never reaching back to them, is lodged in us.
Go-Pro Call of Duty whores, accountable only for our failures,
Justifying the absence of target acquisition.
So sorry that we failed to kill for our sleeping masters,
sorry that they wake to the news of survival not death.
And now with that memory, we cannot sleep or face our children,
I can’t vote without the bile rising from my gut.
That my mark for them permits them murder,
that my hands can never wash clean.
Yet they stand clear and free of my crimes,
they absolve themselves of my savagery
and look on me the savage,
that I be somehow dead yet still alive.
Good morning folks. A little follow up to my video posted the other day, I wanted to say that admitting to bad behaviour in itself does not “make it alright” it is not an apology in itself, that would be something else. Also it is risky being honest, people easily and sometimes purposely misinterpret things, In the latest rambling I said I stole my fathers car which could be understood to be I took it for multiple reasons. I borrowed it without asking never meaning to take it permenantly, technically not stealing but maybe TWOC for those who know what that is. Anyway, it’s out there now lol. I am posting this “Specials” song “It doesn’t make it alright” although the sentiment of the song is not exactly what I am referring to here, the tag line of the title applies. Admitting is not in itself enough, it might be the start of the right path. Anyway…it doesn’t make it alright folks.
He sniffed at Miles Davis in his Pompous English way
but doffed his treasured cap to the tunes of Sid Bechet,
who himself was not a stranger to the pulling of a trigger,
though to one as mean as he was he’d have been a lowly “Nigger”
From High windows he could survey other lesser forms of life,
those toads and grubby proles mired in their strife.
In his literary palace alphabetically displayed
he would charge his poison chalice with words so cruelly made.
