I Am With Child (again)
EVERY YEAR, AS THE 11TH DAY OF NOVEMBER APPROACHES, I feel a strange enshrouding pall descend (or is it a‑scend from the pit of hell) upon my mind and soul, and poetry begins to form inside my heart — a kind of tribute to the role of all the Wilfred Owens of this world who barely lived yet left their art in verbal gemstones twinkling in the blood and mud and dirt. This year, that poem (a war poem, as it’s called) has even now begun to weave its spell inside my pen — ‘The Trenches of Our Time’, this time it’s called. I’ll publish it this many days from now (that’s ten), no matter if it’s fully formed — a grim gestation’s bloody foetus skin and bones, though few will grab the rusty old defibrillator hanging on the wall (for out of primal swamps most folks won’t crawl).
“This is the war to end all wars” (they said and thought they’d won) — the ‘Great War’ as it’s called (it’s “great” in that it slaughtered “half the seed of Europe one by one”) — that scar (along with many more) upon the history of the human race disfigures its already scorched infernal face that’s not unlike the pumpkins permeating hypocritic homes who know no better than to laud demonic deathly thrall from out of one side of their mouths yet claim to rue the war from out the other. I have not much else here to share except to say that every year around this time as idle talk of Armistice or dim Remembrance prates itself on your TV while politicians wear a poppy on their suits the colour of the blood they spill (for such grey men and womb-men will not hesitate to kill and bow the knee to power-elites who bid them what to do), I feel it all approach behind the phoney mirth of Halloween and sense the spirits of the many lads who died for NOTHING, while the generals sipped their sherry on the lawn. They (those sherry-quaffers) are the very devil’s spawn!
The Naked Troubadour 