Care Home Grunt

He’s Marching now,

still marching now

 

Pants stained with piss

And bayonets fixed.

 

He’s Marching now

defences down,

 

A British Soldier

From Bandon Town.

 

Catheter split,

covenant broke,

 

From fearsome fighter

To sad old bloke.

 

Those Mau Mau bastards

are at the door,

 

Not scared of colonials

anymore.

 

Standing too for the evening news,

DMS boots now paper shoes.

 

No Ration packs, he gets to choose

Liquidised dinner laced with booze.

 

Came back home to drive a bus

raised four kids, made no fuss,

 

Never spoke of jungle fires,

Pulling nails, or necklace tyres.

 

But when the twilight touched his mind

it brought back what he’d left behind,

 

And his last stand was made alone

behind the lines in a British Care Home

 

 

One thought on “Care Home Grunt

  1. I wish I had the mental capacity to write a long poem about how this makes me feel. To get to the heart of the issue and dispense with the obstructive and intrusive anger. I should like to write a story from the beginning to the end of a life, capturing the essence of what makes a man become who and what he is, his rise and fall and decline. The beauty and sadness of something so full and yet finite..I fear I do not have a mind evolved enough to even get half way close to the emotions I would like to express in written form. It is so frustrating..

    Like

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