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 my lips and brittle my tongue -

Defies, and the old ways are silenced from youth,

Decaying instead the life never lived;

Pitching a quarrel with the ‘Man’ I could be.

 

2

 

     Courage, be not just facing the led from

A fellow Beings rifle,

It is admitting the Glory we seek

To be known as a somebody,

When we all are a ‘Someone’

Regardless of poverty or egoistic – the trap!

    

3.

 

         Following this myriad of mindless thoughts

Around helter skelter makes blurry my vision,

As looking back through time – the scars

Still remain, making this life difficult in

Negotiating reform,

    

4.

 

     Each word passes like print

Upon crumpled, creased pitted paper,

And condolences are told for the life never known

     As the Ego of Man is not as shallow as thought,

(for surely we live by past mistakes we have learned).

 

     Surely we live by past mistakes we have learned?

 

5.

 

            A frost within Britain paints everything white,

Even the poppy despite all concerns,

But if the dead could talk they perhaps would agree -

That humanity need no more regrets.

 

            We all are now witness as visible;

Glory makes honesty difficult to mumble;

Keeping the wise from speaking their truth,

And as the perma-frost settles the horizon again

And rigor-mortis sets in;

There are still Sons and Daughters we’ll lose.

 

     My eyes, tired from all they have seen,

Look in the mirror – disbelieving all fate,

Conjure yet still; my baby cradled in his

Grand pappy’s arms,

And I’m beckoning selfish a wish for tomorrow,

And there he be, and my reflection queries

All brutality of war,

     With a slight sorrow of smile for a life we could win.

 

Michael J Waite 27^th September 2011.

Dedicated to The Falklands Veterans.