Poetry – Page 14 – Poets to Save America

Saturday, 4 August 2018Saturday, 4 August 2018

Last Tattoo

Gate to Seoul

When the battle is over
When the mission is done
When the tour has ended
With the casing of the guns

When the bugle plays the last note
A soldier’s mind begins to roam
To the things missed on the mission
Hearth, Homeland, Family, and Home

While the time afield was passing
Living, dying, victory, pain
So too back home was changing
Growing, dying, so much loss and gain

From the monotony of the battlefield
Days of boredom, moments of strife
To the monotony of normality
Daily living the family life

The soldier holds two worlds in balance
Both of duty, and of station
Committed fully to both causes
Love of family and of nation

Eventually every watch is over
And every deployment ends
Then a fading old soldier and family
Find time and place where life begins

Wednesday, 1 August 2018Wednesday, 1 August 2018

The Cairns Gave Root

The tunnel was only long enough,

For the darkness to be complete.

Cruciform, it parted to three niches.

In each, stone urns of charred flesh.

But on the winter solstice,

The sun pierces the cross’ cleft.

A priestess waits in the trinity,

And is born again from the light.

The novice, with hair of flames,

Taps the stones along the cairn.

Her music pleases the fairies,

And directs the wind back home.

She revolves with the wind,

White robes carrying the ash,

Torsion. Twisting copper flares,

One stone reaches out for her.

They burn for her, the seer.

She kneels to hear the stone.

The novice touches the spirit,

Remembers her to the living.

As the sun warms her skin,

She laughs. It wasn’t the moors,

Or trees, so generous with greens.

The dark and stones gave root.

Thursday, 19 July 2018

In Ur of the Chaldees,
Standing in the present upon The River’s edge surveying the future and the past;
Smelling the offal of five thousand years of human history boiling in the water and the desert heat;
Hearing the echoes of Sumer and Edom, Assyria and Babylon, alongside that of Riyadh and Tehran-
Chariots crashing against shields and spears,
The whistle of arrows and stones,
The distant crack of a Kalashnikov;
Feeling the oppressive weight of human history, the eternal struggle,
At least since the Plant of Heartbeat was stolen by the serpent.
Tasting the salty blowing sand- heavy in the air,
The acidic pollution of overcrowded cities,
And the acrid smoke from burning bodies and the burning oilfields;
Death is on the breeze.
Seeing the Tel of Ur in its ancient geometric splendor,
Ishtar gate rising in Babylonian majesty,
The crumbled Walls of Nineveh no longer protected by the thunder of chariots,
And the concrete panels dividing every community from Basra to Mosul;
Seeing the unseen deep and knowing the unknown like Gilgamesh of old;
In Ur of the Chaldees, in the shadow of Babylon, the wind flows down from the mountains of Assyria;
In Ur of the Chaldees mere men try to conquer death,
Yet cannot even conquer sleep,
And in the trying release visions and hallucinations of suffering upon mankind.
In Ur of the Chaldees Abram was called out on a journey without an end.
Father Abraham- a stranger in a strange land,
A stranger in a strange land- as am I,
A stranger in a strange land- as are We.
In Ur of the Chaldees Utnapishtim grieves eternally-
The cradle of civilization has been made into a tomb.