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...

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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...

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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...

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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 

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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

...

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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...

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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...

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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 

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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?

...

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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 ...

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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

...

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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.

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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...

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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...

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                                                     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

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 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

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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...

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"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.

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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,
...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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

...

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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

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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...

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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...

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                                                            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 ...

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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

...

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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."

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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...

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Submissions saught to cartyweb@hotmail.com for the February edition of Cartys Poetry Journal.

Read the January edition below...

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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...

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