war poetry (Remove filter)
Walking into light
Morning sun silvered the poplar leaves
Somewhere others lay in the cut clay, waiting
And I smelt the sea’s dead things
As I walked.
Kelp, razor shells, crabs, limpets
We laughed and swam in sandy craters
And I walked
By Goat's Water, the Old Man looked down
As he had for all my life
And all those other lives before
The smell of wet bracken, sphagnum, washed sl...
Sunday 10th November 2024 1:19 pm
Ukraine are still at War
Ukraine are Still at War.
You might have heard about this before.
Ukraine and Russia are still at war.
They appear to have become the background news.
A nation still being persecuted and abused.
Invaded by their neighbour without provocation.
Inflicting untold horrors on an innocent nation.
Initially the world rallied and showed they cared.
To defend this innocent...
Friday 1st November 2024 1:28 am
Flatpack
It looks like a toy, my flatpack of war;
I picked it up at the D-I-Y store,
But don’t be deceived and be in no doubt,
This purchase will lead to a proper rout.
It shoots from the front, it shoots from the back,
It turns our defences into attack.
It costs next to nothing this side of town;
Once it’s assembled, the bombs will rain down.
Pitilessly, no prisoners taken,
Citi...
Monday 6th November 2023 8:47 am
The War
Who had waged countless wars
That have all ultimately become
Pounds of wounds
Sitting on both shoulders
All the wars turned into
Pure exhaustion
And lots of embarrassment
Came into being later on
Prayers can beat off
The soul's meanigless wars
Sunday 26th March 2023 12:38 pm
Resistant News
Written in March 2022 in response to Simon Armitage's 'Resistance'
We watch
the News
unable
to comprehend
the horror that is war:
we see
destruction... death... weeping...
children who do not understand
held in the arms of mothers
who do not understand
anything
except
...
Monday 20th March 2023 11:25 am
After The Holocaust
Here I am,
The last man survived
Nobody left to console
None to share the pain
The only fool to withstand
The holocaust
It is raining since
The last bullet fired
Perhaps to wash out
Human sins
Till a single drop of
Dead blood remains
Feeling ashamed
Of all the memories
Feeling guilty
Of human legacy
Feeling relieved
From war a...
Sunday 12th February 2023 3:33 pm
Square
Room in dark paint with crumbling walls and hollowed holes
Stares back with its glimmering lights from outside
With the lowered ceilings and sound of bellows
A place fit for safe and a place relied
Crusted floor due to dirt, mud, tears, and blood
Rocking floor and the swaying curtains fuels cry of ballad
Burst of sounds made a powerful gust that shattered glass
A sound that makes its poin...
Saturday 3rd December 2022 3:51 am
BORN INTO WAR
Only now that its physical
The wars become visible
Certified verified news
Fighting for oil fighting for gold
Nobody wins we all lose
Controlled legal violence
One minute silence
Soldiers lost legs arms and lives
Exception for fighting
To young ones its frightening
You wonder why they carry knives
Politicians sniff coke
The systems a joke
...Thursday 28th April 2022 3:22 pm
Let's Show This to Putin
Confusion
People milling about
Screaming
At a makeshift hospital a mother cries for her child
Cameras follow through to the operating room
Where the child lies
The doctor screams at the camera
He sounds like he’s saying I’ll smash your face in
But when the translation comes
He’s saying
Show this to Putin
Because the child has died
Illusion
Last week they...
Thursday 10th March 2022 11:46 am
The War
Momentary peace is a thing,
Lifetime of peace who has ever gotten?
And there exist people who haven't witnessed a single spring,
The fruits they've reaped off life are all rotten.
Time lingers on, it takes small sluggish steps,
While the war seems to last for an eternity.
And though the mind's tired and body's started to sweat,
There seems no concrete vision, no certainty.
Innumerable ...
Tuesday 7th December 2021 6:04 pm
The hollow man
The hollow man is the memory of valley and hill of life these valleys show no end but plain of enteral life
The man gets his name empty hall of many dreams and lies within a house of the phantom, teacher, mistress through their trial an experience from the love of family and soul value
The hollow man filled with regret an empathy toward the phantom we collected through th...
Monday 9th August 2021 3:49 am
Children in the war
A child is stuck in the war
Her screams are unheard in her throat
Her mother is bleeding
In the ruins of the kitchen
Another child is running
To the ocean in her dream
The bullets do not seem
To let her go a single step
Another child is lying
Under the old pink blanket
With prayers in her whispers
Wanting to be deaf
To be deaf to the bombs
Falling from the ch...
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 11:03 am
Anzacs
ANZACS.
Gone on the winds of gripping ice
their clapping boots on stone.
March bravely in the hands of night
to a place far far from home.
Where night awaits with darting lights
And screeching bullets fly.
A place where breaths are stolen
From our heroes where they lie.
In fields of fading hopes and dreams
Sink deep beneath the mud.
As cries of pain and desperare please
get swallowed...
Tuesday 19th May 2020 5:13 am
The Range of Belief
Glory, Glory
Hallejuah!
A new age of finite secularism is here
Educating the masses to eliminate their freedom
And attributing a range to their beliefs
Keep them smart enough to ask questions but lazy enough to where they won't go looking
For answers are the spark and the gas is on
Keep them angry yet undetermined and unsure and let them approach the stands
For their lack o...
Wednesday 18th March 2020 5:58 pm
Dealing with the Dead
It isn't just the war dead that I remember on Remembrance Sunday. I often think about the instigators of war: the self-aggrandising politicians who drag nations into conflict, the incompetent commanders safe behind the front line while the troops go to their deaths. Can they live lives untroubled by the carnage they caused? Or do the ghosts of the dead come back to haunt them for their crimes?
...
Sunday 11th November 2018 1:09 pm
The Drum/John Scott/Translation In Amharic/Alem Hailu/ያስጠላኛል ያ ቀፋፊ ድምፅ የታምቡሩ(ለመዝሙር የታሰበ ግጥም)/ጆን ስኮት
I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,
To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms;
And when Ambition's voice commands,
To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands.
I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To ...
Monday 26th February 2018 12:50 pm
Ricochet
Shells fly overhead,
dust kicking up in the air
filling the lungs,
and choking the life
from the blank eyes.
Staring up wide eyed and teary
as the life slips away,
Laying there bare to the bone
stripped of the soul
lost to the sea of dust and rubble
laying underfoot of the building
...
Saturday 3rd February 2018 12:58 am
We Shall Remember
41 million casualties since the war began
John Condon among them, died like a man
He was only 18 when he met his demise
Ypres, Belgium he finally closed his eyes
We shall remember
He wasn’t the youngest to serve in this plight
In Serbia Momčilo Gavrić claimed that right
Promoted to corporal instead of being at school
At eight years old he was the armies fuel.
...
Monday 20th November 2017 8:43 am
The Victory Day
The 8th -9th of May – the Greatest Day,
the Saint Holiday – the Victory Day.
A holiday with glee and spree,
a holiday with tears that appear
remembering those soldiers,
the heroes of the Second World War.
Those hardcore days
we don’t want to face anymore.
That was the largest war
in the history of mankind,
I don’t want you to be blind
but to know and remember the facts:
almost 58 milli...
Tuesday 9th May 2017 4:39 pm
Why were their poets silent?
In Dark Times
by Bertolt Brecht, translated from the German by Humphrey Miles
They won’t say: when the walnut tree shook in the wind
But: when the house-painter crushed the workers.
They won’t say: when the child skimmed a flat stone
across the rapids
But: when the great wars were being prepared for.
They won’t say: when the woman came into the room
But: when the great...
Friday 11th November 2016 12:02 pm
SIDOLO
SIDOLO
Spent shell casings everywhere
gleaming in the July sun
bodies of three martyrs lie
victims of a German gun
Italy is crying now
see how fast the tears run.
Three priests in nineteen forty four
slaughtered by the devil’s hand
innocent of all misdeeds
outrage sweeps throughout the land
...Sunday 7th August 2016 10:50 am
Wanderer
Wanderer
Homes deserted
Destroyed by power and prejudice
The blood encrusted brick and concrete dust,
The remains of living, of hope
A memory now
Replaced by pain and hunger
While legs worn and weary,
On shoes broken by endless footsteps
Camp in a pulverized arena
Undefeated,
The donated blanket,
The small gifts of living, a hope
A future, I wander, I wander
...Monday 11th January 2016 7:00 pm
THE SPOILS OF WAR
And the troops go marching proudly by
as she wipes a tear from her weary eyes,
the one that she seeks, she will never again hold
for he died at his post; he was thirty years old.
The colours fly high on a cool autumn breeze
as man and boy march with well practiced ease,
so glad to be home after being so brave,
with flags overhead and not covering their graves.
She...
Monday 24th August 2015 11:59 pm
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
"We can't risk losing people,
Killed in action, far away.
What'll happen to their wives,
Their children, the next of kin?
We have to end the war,
But, none the less, we are
Too proud, too good, too vigorous,
To just give up, to just retreat.
Let's see what happens," did they say,
And to end a war, to save their lives,
They killed two hundred thousand people,
And didn't stop at all.
Sunday 26th July 2015 1:42 pm
In the end, nothing changed at all
Open your books,
On page seventy-two.
Read these sides,
And learn about the past,
Which is not anymore.
We learn about war,
About hate and racism,
And they call it past,
And close their eyes
To not see reality.
One day, they will,
I hope, will understand,
That to be in denial,
Doesn't help altogether.
Because in the end,
Nothing changed a...
Sunday 26th July 2015 11:31 am
Good old times
Old, black-white photographs,
Show soldiers, smiling, proud.
First guns in their hands,
Then bullets in heads,
They died for their fatherland.
Not long ago, when war has reigned,
It poisoned the peoples' mind.
Turned love to hate,
Made people die,
They died for their fatherland.
We say "We learned", but we all know,
That we didn't learn at all.
Just look around, people die,
Day fo...
Sunday 26th July 2015 11:10 am
Stranger of War
He is a soldier of his own war
His mind is a weapon of poison
The battle approaches each morning
The enemy grins at him in the reflections
His insanity runs through his blood
His fears invades his soul like intruders
He stands alone with an army of mistakes
Mistakes that represent eternal guilt
He shoots himself with venomous lies
He allows it to flow through his ra...
Saturday 11th October 2014 6:38 pm
White Feather
White Feather
I didn’t see her pass me in the street,
the woman with the husband at the front,
but felt the tell-tale tickle of a feather -
pressed discreetly soft against my palm.
The accusation whispered in a hate-filled voice,
“Coward”, dripped with venom from her lips
and I assumed she talked to me, although I couldn’t see
if the feather in my hand was truly white.
For I had returne...
Wednesday 9th July 2014 7:49 pm
Passchendaele (Autumn 1917)
Passchendaele (Autumn 1917)
Blind, wide open, eyes.
Dripping poppy petal tears.
Crimson rivers flow.
Fields transformed to mud.
Deep cut trenches scar the earth.
Wounds that will not heal.
Gas clouds drift from hell.
Death exhaled in fetid breath.
Lost boys fall like flies.
Ghosts haunt no mans land
searching for their bitter souls
in butchered bodies.
Finding empty shells,
...
Saturday 24th May 2014 11:50 pm
Grandchildren Of The Somme
Grandchildren Of The Somme
the dead lay on the injured earth
all wearing grey death masks of mud
a tally of what life is worth
just bone and sinew flesh and blood
attrition wrought its deadly cost
the river Somme held back its flood
humanity forever lost
just bone and sinew flesh and blood
sixteen miles wide and just six deep
survivors wondered if they could
block out the dreams t...
Saturday 19th April 2014 3:38 pm
Beloved
As children they grew up together
Bonded by friendship so deep
The passage to love was marked
By effortless consummation.
Their love was godly.
Fate forged shackles with no key.
But families fractured
Communities convulsed
Countries disintegrated.
Upon great tables in small rooms
Politics scissored flags - land - people -
And stitched up new nations.
T...
Tuesday 4th March 2014 12:34 pm
Gentlemen of the Cotton Towns
Gentlemen of the Cotton Towns
I had flown with the best of them,
Fresh faces – lean with a look of hunger
And all to do their bit for Queen and Country,
I had leapt too,
Felt the mighty currents of air
Roar through my ears at terminal velocity
And I could run like the very wind itself,
And I had walked with comrades
On grounds that could take...
Thursday 17th October 2013 1:47 am
How many
How many
How many fathers will kiss their children goodbye as they sleep.
Then slip into the night. Never to kiss them again.
How many parents will live out long lives,
Knowing the curse of outliving their young.
How many wives will clutch memories to heart and medals in hand.
Instead of holding the husband they loved.
How many children will ...
Monday 12th August 2013 12:24 am
Vex Recedo
We march
In the light of day, that came at the third strike
Patterns of our boots etched in the mud
Like twisted leaves, a vortex in the dawn
Takes our breaths with each step
Harmful red lights glinting
Through the broken foliage, the toxic forest
Leaning in by our sides
It can't be long, I say, can't be too long
Shouts come now, from the front of the line
...
Monday 11th March 2013 9:21 pm
Steps/Spirals
Through the air and climbing
A mist-bound projectile
Hurtling, defying the atmosphere
Pollution in raindrops, brightening
Traversing ever upward
On this endless marked gaze
The view from the bottom, the tower spire
Stretching
Toward the golden vault
We look and see
The silver beauty
The stone engravings
Blemished with moss, attached and thickening
...Sunday 3rd March 2013 2:21 pm
Leaked Truth
Flash of a camera.
Shot from a gun.
Click, a distant finger
Exposes the truth,
That you would have buried
Amongst the bodies in the sand.
Rolled over with aggressive force
So no trace could be left
Just red truth seeping into
The mouth of the thirsty beaten ground
Who will excrete the lies
Too hard to digest.
Deceitful coloured vomit
Stained
Is left on your h...
Tuesday 5th June 2012 4:44 pm
On The Photo In The Newspaper
On the photo in the newspaper -
The soldiers, standing arm in arm,
The heroes of the World War II,
With smiles on faces and charm.
The photo was taken before a battle,
Before the guns began to rattle.
The sky was blue,
The grass was green,
The friends were true
The truest you have ever seen.
No one knows their names,
No one knows who...
Tuesday 29th May 2012 11:27 pm
Fortune of Tears
Fortune of Tears
1
It is so harsh,
Cuts like the thinnest sliver of glass,
Meandering easily straight towards
Where melancholy has been my life-long past;
An attrition of war with no real place to go even though,
They say wounds are to heal with time,
The scab on ...
Tuesday 27th September 2011 9:55 pm
The Price of Freedom-(extended version)
A ghostly image of a soldier
stood in the background,
as a mother with a babe in her
arms stood by a grave site.
She lowly whispered, "Father
this is your son. Son this is your
father. He gave his life so that
others might live."
Now she is alone, but she
will survive. She will raise
this child without the aid
of others. This child will
...
Tuesday 14th June 2011 3:41 pm
The Price of Freedom
A ghostly image of a soldier
stood in the background,
as a mother with a babe in her
arms stood by a grave site.
She lowly whispered, "Father
this is your son. Son this is your
father. He gave his life so that
others might live."
Sunday 12th June 2011 5:38 pm
Whistle-Blower
The release of news, not new, for half a year,
Has the U.S. military strangled with fear,
As their abuse is quite so exposed,
And the analyst who confessed to their crimes,
Surely locked away and denied,
Just as many would suppose
To show the helicopter of slaughter,
All a-whirl with sadistic laughter,
As it mows a family down,
For to have the public se...
Monday 26th July 2010 5:10 pm
Cartys Poetry Journal
Submissions saught to cartyweb@hotmail.com for the February edition of Cartys Poetry Journal.
Read the January edition below...
Carty's Poetry Journal : FREE PDF DOWNLOADTuesday 19th January 2010 5:37 pm
No Warning
No Warning
I hung up me guns;
But for you, you cunt
I’ll take ‘em down
Don’t push me
I’m at the end of my tether
I love peace, love, freedom
You love neither.
I’ll give you a bit o’ Irish
‘Cause we know how to war
You might know aggression, oppression
But we’ve whipped that before…
I hung up me guns;
But for you, you cunt
I’ll take ‘em down
Don’t push me…
I lov...
Monday 23rd November 2009 4:18 pm
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