The war
you know
The way young men are scared from the moment
they awaken at first light
to the moment they lie still and dream of sleep
Bursting with life
A sweet hearts name
inked onto shoulders and chests
a history yet written
a life to be led
and endured and inhaled
Assailed with the scent of promise
they are endless options
There is a number now
one nobody could have guessed
And it grows
it has names attached
sometimes crumpled photo's
images of young men and how they
looked before the day came
with fear and sweat
with blood and piss and shit
as they died screaming
The number leaps out from the pages
of newspapers as you sit and sip coffee
It ticks over
everyday,
another face
flickers into view for a moment
then disappears
gathered into the arms
of statistics
forgotten
just a part of the total
because if you say three thousand
real fucken quick
it doesn’t sound quite real does it?
appeasing the same blood lusting God
who drank so deeply in
in
in
and
And every time
it is scared young men
with sweet hearts
in ink across shoulders and chests
who give themselves to the number
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Iraq
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4 comments:
I think you were brave for writing this. I can't bring myself to write about the war in Iraq, it's too painful for me. You summed up the feelings quite well along with the imagery. Sometimes I will just sit and stare at their pictures, their names and ages. Feel despair that another life has been taken away much too soon. No one wants to die, especially this way.
oh well done! Bravo!
If I was still editor of anything I would snap this one up. You really get the grit without overdoing it.
It's so hard to make the kind of impact you need to in a poem like this without lapsing into melodrama or gore.
Funny, I was just having this very conversation with a Japanese guy on Wednesday. All those young boys who die in war.
Somebody's husband, somebody's son, somebody's cousin ... reduced to some body ...
And all the love and effort that went into growing them up to be fine young men, just thrown away.
moon
Thankyou Sandy, it has taken me quite a while to come to the point where I can write of it, I hope I will be able to write more, because it is such a terrible situation, and such a terrible waste.
Hiya Moon, yes, all those years of nuturing taken in a moment, car accidents etc are bad enough at stealing the lives of our young, without sending them to a place where bombs and guns are waiting to kill them every day.
I'm glad you felt it didnt dip into the melodramatic, I was trying for restraint.
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