The garden is no more grown than was when left,
the Sea Spray of Portsmouth the Grime of Waterloo
Cling fresh beneath the reawakening memories of you.
Between the leaving and their return the world shifted
their brains rattled by battery and bomb,
Something replaced the life in them and something now is gone.
The surrender of innocence on English Summer evenings
was stolen by the rape of youth and a fleeting fuck of liberation,
Is a bottle of flat brown beer enough to drown their bitter indignation?
They must now retreat from the front they made themselves
to cower silently in their peaceful rage,
Returning to sweet freedoms won, inside a gilded cage.
Reverse search a pool of blood to its foetus of ideas,
calculate trajectories to a pin-head through the years.
While stippling marks proximity the silenced tongue won’t speak,
for its hell that takes our liberty when damp Earth entombs the meek.
In cavities of ancient skulls the dust of time drowns words
where cave walls once were libraries, now echoes fall unheard.
Where hit-list’s flamed in burn-pits and armies forged their prize,
re-written were our histories and their curses damned our eyes.
Then blinded willingly or not we sweep ahead in time
we carve sacred memorials in elevated rhyme,
and the horrors of reality will not be writ upon this page
as we flounder in our duality it is guilt that we assuage.
Viewing the world through Inch thick glass,
the traffic chokes to a halt.
A veiled shadow holds a face to the window.
Its gaze encrusted with disappointment
eyes as pale as a moonlit desert,
We stare at each other from our different worlds
I silently mouth sorry
whilst thumbing my passports pages,
The Child Spirit sees me whole.
Frozen for the longest moment
in a humming steel cocoon,
I watch the wagons circle, vulturesque.
A hand-print is smeared on the window
I touch it before walking to the terminal,
less than the span of my palm or the fold of a Dollar bill.
Ascending through dust and cloud I curse the City,
Roads spinning out from the Circle below, the people are no longer real.
The Dubai lounge is first class cool just my Duty free and me.
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 folklore, 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
