In Vain [poem]
[new poem for “Remembrance Day”, November 11th]
Face down in the mud (my newsome
view of world) brings wisdom’s harbour
neatly to my flapping open door. I spit
and loudly roar no more to stand again
This frailsome new fragility has warmed
the would-be wasted portions of my
priestly vision-vine which wistly grew
and grizzled largely unaligned and void
Unremarkable razor-marks adorn my
stifled throat like stuccoed roughcast
careless flungfast fungalled seizures
reasoning without success or even cry
Above my levelled head those bullets
zinging with a cold precision random
circus double-visioned conscienceful
velocity (to some: atrocity) of rhyme
Poppies like a carpet soon will cover all
the heinous futile excrement of war —
a sea of blood and opiates — while
skylarks inexplicably will singly soar
My fevered brain like blotting paper
soaks up unfertility from lifeless earth
What am I worth? sings every soldier
dying on a farmer’s former golden land
An oily cricket bat. A wicketkeeper’s pad.
The spireful village skyline pricks my
crude reality of clay and crashingness and
corkly balls as hard as bullets baffle me
Hallucination’s welcome information
numbs my broken body but it cannot
mend my seared and scarful soul.
A dozen holes. & war is birth control
What madness ever grazed this earth
with scars and bloody sackcloth ashen
screams and dreamless dreams of
something green and growthsome?
I lie here on the cheerful cusp of chaos
Mortar holes engore the ground around
me like a pusful acned pockmarked face
while generals sip sherry on the lawn
I am a pawn. They made my moves
(manoeuvres which they hid). A million
grieving parents inculcated to believe their
once were little sucklings did not die in vain
They did.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2013
The Naked Troubadour 