We are the pals brigade me lads,
the finest that you've seen.
We tilled the land just like our dads
or picked the coal black seam.
And now we're off to a foreign clime
to show Fritz a trick or two.
But we'll be back by Christmastime,
to spend it home with you.
We are the pals brigade me boys,
taking longer than we thought.
Battling through the mud and noise
for each inch of territory fought.
So keep the home fires burning dear
we'll be back before you know it.
But if we're to reap the harvest here,
well, first we have to sow it.
We are the pals brigade it's true,
battered and depleted.
We showed old Fritz a thing or two
and came home undefeated.
And now we've all made it back.
home après la guerre.
In serried ranks, on a plaque,
on the cenotaph in the square.
What war songs will you sing?
About the war that was to end all them?
Over There, Keep the Home Fires Burning,
When Johnny Comes Marching Home?
And next
The White Cliffs of Dover, I’ll Be Seeing You,
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree?
Danced we fast and slow,
Where did the war songs go?
While we were sobbing goodbyes
To a new lullaby.
And now, will a new generation
Find no songs of hope are being penned?
Deadly scattered wars on global plains
Will you sing a song for these?
Where is the poet’s verse in song
Of these threatening days,
Wars and rumors of war
Without melody;
Without Verse
Without End
Silent
Pins on maps, pins on maps.
You notice the trees seem grown up, so much more than you have; arms are thick, gnarled
like they have been force-fed steroids, unlike the used pipe cleaners that hang like wet
towels from your shoulders.
Recalling the privet hedge that your father loved: shaping bolster boundaries every fourth
week, hoping it would dull the world into a soft subtle melody of background music; lying
besieged by the rubble of too many feet, too many voyeurs.
Terracotta blotched across the portal to your cocoon, split like the moth had already flown,
but you were the one who flew, singeing wings in your sense deprived flight; the night never
felt as comfortable to you as it folded around your flames.
Your life littered amongst the charred past like a melded genetic mistake,
teddy morphed into something even your nightmares kept hidden.
You know the bubbled paper well its something you see in every shop window, a brand
displayed as stigmata. They called you hero; you the one with hidden matches; you the one
who craved infamy,
still burning.
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