War and Remembrance
Here Is
“Listen you fuckers you screw-heads you cunts”
He never talks so no need to ask them to listen
He used to talk
He builds his strength so he can destroy
He used to protect
He thinks and reads so he can express himself
He used to write
He looks at beautiful things to avoid the horror
He used to keep an open mind
He embraces a religion which he despises
He used to fear his damnation
He has knuckle dusters in his glove compartment
He used to bestow benefit on doubters
He sang his babies to sleep and raged against wrong
He curses children and cracks dull skulls
Here is what you made him
before you
Here is what you wanted from him
Here Is
Here Is
Here Is
© Wolfgar 2019
We gave them names
On roads between the tribal territories we would stop
to hide amongst the green of things,
some lads would smoke and some be silent.
We talked to horses and forgot our lives,
most often the stillness would calm us.
From hidden hillsides we’d watch our enemies move.
We gave the horses names and fed them apples,
they became our friends they listened to our confessions.
They were not aligned to flags or kerbstone colours.
The radio static broke the spell like lightening strikes,
the rains would wash us back to streets
where our calmness would evaporate to hate.
On the Derriaghy Road between the hell of sink estates
we harassed joyriders and freedom fighters,
terrorists and lovers too, the green and gold, red white and blue.
We gave them names and labels from fokelore, rhymes and fables
just like the horses in the stables
we gave them names.
We fed their hungry bitter souls with reason and with cause,
we never thought we might be wrong
when kicking down their doors.
We gave them names in a language laced with spite
we cursed our enemies so, to make our cause seem right
We gave them names.
And when I hear those names again, spoken, spat and screamed
I think of friendly horses
and wish the rest was just a dream
© Wolfgar 2019
No Covenant
I am the fuller in a blade
a gouge of absent steel
I make you lighter for the parry
and quicker off the heel
I’m something that is missing
but is there to bring you gain
a flaw that sees you winning
and your enemies the slain
Though you’ll never know a lover
you’ll reap the victors spoil
and your days of peace be forfeit
for the balance of your toil
© Wolfgar 2019
A Juggernaut requires Bureacracy
Monstrosities love little men
the hen pecked type
good with a pen
For measuring and counting stuff
that’s good or bad
or not quite good enough
To cross the t’s and turn blind eyes
to adjust their books
and snopake lies
That look good in well cut uniform
who can recite an oath
and be reborn
Who’ll save them brass by using gas
and tell no tales
if all should fail
They value heads more-so than hearts
a brain they’ll kill
but hearts restart
So I’m averse to bureacrats
it’s my belief
they’re mostly twats
© Wolfgar 2019
Two poems from the forgotten generations (New audio with intro)
What beauty comes of war
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.
Who would write poetry about that?
© Wolfgar 2019
A million more did start
I wish I could walk a mile on my twisted wasted legs,
but they are on a cratered path
somewhere else instead.
I wish I could speak a truth with my mangled severed tongue,
but it festers in a blood soaked pit
where silence was begun.
I wish I could show you vision through my blinded plucked out eyes,
but they were stamped on with derision
when I pleaded with them, why?
I wish I could take your hand with my shattered broken claw,
but they shackled it and hacked it off
when I knocked upon their door.
I wish I could make you feel with my broken bleeding heart,
the one that when they stopped it
a million more did start.
© Wolfgar 2019
A cleansing by fire
The first mouthful turns me inside out,
my soul screams down a tunnel of memories.
The slap, the fist, the spittle in my eyes
the sound of my mothers whimpering cries.
A key in the door, the stairwells echo
panicked faces in torch-light.
The desert with impact craters like a scarred brain,
sack cloth floating in the hot seared air.
This is where I laid that memory to rest,
where I exorcised my trauma by transference,
where I pollenated a thousand miseries,
with lead and fist and bomb,
where I punched a peoples shadow
until the shadow was all gone,
and I’m pouring in the poison that blackens out my skies,
for that fucker on the stairwell, he’ll never hear me cry.
© Wolfgar 2019
Reportage
I kissed your hand you held it out to me in a song
you were taking photographs of children dying
I was shooting madmen in a jungle
I came home took drugs and fucked whores
you went home and fucked life and decried wars
I stripped skin from my worthless corpse
you put flesh on lost causes and pissed on cornflakes
I hated you and loved you too
you hated me and never imagined love
and now we fight all our battles together
my bullets wake your world you world spits bullets back
We are a fucking battle of love
and I surrender
Every place we ever were before we met
is littered with bodies and shit we can’t forget
© Wolfgar 2019
Survival?
The skyline spattered by air bursting shells,
canvas of grey, the birds have flown free.
The Belfry relieved of its heavenly Bells
and the crucifix splintered to saviourless tree.
Rats eat bootlaces through to the bone
then we eat the rats and so eat our own.
God has deserted what we now defend
but the Devil is stoic, the Devil’s a friend.
He rides on the shells that fracture the ear
then steers them away tormenting our fear.
though many forget the reasons we came,
we hate those who sent us more than the slain.
We’ve children back home in some other place,
but their voices have faded as too has the face.
We don’t look in mirrors for fear of our eyes,
but see in each other our self serving lies,
that bear us the wounded away from this hell
with silent dead whispers we never can tell,
of how we survived to be better off dead
then to live it again each day in our head.
© Wolfgar 2019
in extremis
I thought I caught a glimpse of me coming back
the other way, a phantom of me somewhere from the future
in a tunnel white with dust, heavy in a veil of blood.
Going this way there is no past. I focus on the boots in front
heels kicking up the sand stone and goat shit,
almost laughing I choke, the voices in the distance sound killable.
Up ahead the sky is flashing white through yellow
the crump comes seconds later,
somewhere a barrel is smoking and a life is gone.
Never more alive than close to death,
let me touch it let me feel the void,
I’m ready to take the sweeping scythe.
How many times did we leap its dripping blade?
or turn a corner one block early to live another day,
then hear the stories of the dead who turned the other way.
And did we care? we did not, we revelled in our life,
we shrugged off death.
I saw in your eyes our luck running out,
as I saw them power down when yours ran out,
in the moment I saw you fade,
I shouted “fuck” then you were dead.
The last sound you heard was me shout “fuck”
I wish I’d shouted something else,
but I shouted that, and you were dead.
I saw myself reflected in a fuselage on the way home,
strapped to a board like an outcast angel
I shouted “FUCK” at the medic, he shouted “Fuck off” back, we laughed.
At the reception centre I saw my wife’s face in the crowd,
it didn’t feel like home yet,
I felt myself break, right there, right then.
I hope Valhalla is hell for you,
for the quiet of this peace is killing me.
© Wolfgar 2018
Štimlje revisited (unseen casualties)
Traveling 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.
Who would write poetry about that?
© Wolfgar 2018
Šljivovica
Please visit the link below to view War and Remembrance collection
https://wolfgarwords.com/category/war-and-remembrance/
I stood inside the shallow valley within a bowl of snow-blind echoes,
freezing in a balkan-scape I pissed iced whiteness yellow.
A hundred paces up the rise,
a conversation, who lives, who dies?
decisions breathed in foggy breath
mock handshakes sealed untimely death.
© Wolfgar 2018
The Unfound Generation
Words strung across pages of No Mans Land
like spilt intestines dragged through bloody time,
obscenely lit by flares of remembrance,
strobe like nightmares illuminating faces never seen.
Those wretches, unconcerned with poetry and prose
spat out their hauntings not caring they ever be read.
Such horror was their reality, now our fiction,
so full of hell they detached from it, regressing in utero.
How many last words “Mother” how many last skies black?
how thick with mud the bloodied track, how void then of scarlet petals?
From misery came misery, from the art of war came art,
from roaring cannon came silent peace, and from hate came love.
But still from war comes war, as always will.
The Greatest Generation of Men remains Unfound.
© Wolfgar 2018
Timber Sycamore
Oh tree Oh tree
how can you be where water doesn’t flow?
how spread the spores of conflict
from seed not nature sown?
Yet here you stand so wieldy
rootless in the sand
a pollinated theory
blown far across the land
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
(Initially I wasn’t going to add the link, but often subtlety will get you nowhere)
© Wolfgar 2018
Last light
Along the hedge row Surrey lane
a last light shimmers by moonlights wane,
as bar staff stack the chairs again
he walks the road by which he came.
Can’t hear the sea this far inland
or recall the feel of hand in hand,
though in his ears still sounds the band
his mouth turned dry with blackened sand.
He shuns the lies of suited men
hunched by stones in London rain,
who meekly say with fingers crossed
We really do regret your loss.
The lonely house stands guard alone
for this old soul returning Home,
to sit it out just one more night
and pray for dawns relieving light.
© Wolfgar 2018
Forget the Parade
Oh you can tell
from that bewildered face
he isn’t happy in this place
Here come flags
and banging drums
the marching men
the single mums
He hates these men
his dads old muckers
drunken medal wearing
fuckers
When poppies fall in civic halls
his only thought
to burn them all
for all he wants is what he had
the fallen poppy
he called dad
Child of no Hope
At nine fifteen on the twenty first
all lessons ended for the One hundred and forty four
the toil of a nation slipped
and never again was it like before
Never the laughter
never the joy
never the going home bell
only the prospect of childless future
and drinking oneself into hell
Out of the window see the infant ghosts walk
little satchels and skipping ropes
innocent childlike talk
ascending through thickened colliery dust
please?
if there be god to him we entrust
Yet still the monument stands unheeded
we still pull the life from the ground
and for the loss of One hundred and forty four
it seems not much has been found
Whilst Children of Eden whether Sunni or Shia
cower in stair wells and die from their fear
whilst our empire of greed reigns down on their land
we bury their dreams under overturned sand
Whilst the oil we pull fuels our progress
in concert with their demise
our toil is slipping upon them
and blackening out their skies
and blackening out their skies
© Wolfgar 2018
Too late the truth
With gargoyled faces they stare dead eyed
into the past of their happy lives.
Not yet removed from the field
their souls still warm as breath.
These stupefied few ripped and flung like dolls,
look at their carcasses, what do you see?
lies and hope and pride, innocence?
regret or loss, no there is nothing.
And over there the same,
staring back visionless masks of puppets.
Above acres of mudded blood angels weep,
while demons give thanks to eternal men.
These ragged children, bastard sons fathers,
with never the chance to nurture or love.
Now they know the truth,
their voices disembodied for evermore.
© Wolfgar 2018
Mentioned in dispatches
Do you think they felt the weight of history
pissing down in the drizzling sea spray
or when pulling on their mudded boots
that trod and fought through blood and clay
The fingers that caressed old photographs
were the same that clawed and scraped the skies
their last wept tears streaked ashen cheeks
as they left their deadened eyes
Were their grotesque withered bodies treated
solemnly and kind
or tossed as cannon fodder
in the trenches dug behind
Do you think their brothers cried for them
or resigned themselves to meet
and secretly reached out to them
to embrace their own defeat
And how can we in all truth now
profess to know their pain
and promise we’ll remember them
when the drums beat hasn’t changed
© Wolfgar 2018
