Tom

Bullet Holes In Backyards

Wednesday 1st June 2016 9:57 am

Wound up
some nights
I go out to think…

Of all the truths we share
there are little reminders we choose to keep hidden
fix up the front porch

but bullet holes in backyards
they go on…

We may not know what they mean
but we know what they represent
the past is scarred, pock-marked

Did the children stand beside the pond
where they were sprayed and felled
did the family huddle close by the brickwork
razed by mad ideals

the past has cratered skin
the past erodes, underfoot

But bullet holes in backyards
they go on...

Some nights I go out
some nights when we fight
I light a cigarette
breathe deep
And push my fingertips into
into...

Bullet holes in backyards
they go on

Each scratch
each groove
Shifts my perspective
chills my fiery mood

And I go back inside…

(May, 2016)

past

◄ Beneath An Island Sky

A Love Experience ►

Comments

david coulthard

Tue 7th Jun 2016 19:19

Dear Tom I am 63 years old and I have never fired a gun.

Although my granddad was a soldier killed in WW2.

Other members of my family have served in more recent conflicts and my dad did his national service and met my mum at Catterick Barracks.

I have had my share of suffering and grief but I have found that trying to write a few words every day is giving me a little relief

Keep up the good work yours Davdcxx

Harry O'Neill

Wed 1st Jun 2016 16:02

Tom,
Your poem recalls an incident in the 1940, Christmas blitz in Liverpool when I was a young boy. We used to go through a yard to the air raid shelter which was under a
warehouse, and one night - early on - a spray of what could only have been machine gun bullets hit the whitewashed wall as we were going through.

(the only good bit was that mr Finnigan the ARP man - who was hated by all the kids - dived and broke his nose, and had it under a huge plaster for ages)

There were three `hits` on the street, including one on an air raid shelter in Blackstock gardens at the top ( which can be read about on the internet)

Some years later A temporary management pupil at the factory where I worked who had been a German bomber pilot told me what it was like looking down at Liverpool between the three silver reflections of the river, the railway line to Southport, and the Leeds and Liverpool canal.

I sometimes think of the devastation which must have been suffered by the Germans by our own bombing, and it makes me feel much warmer to the Europe thing.

Sorry to go on a bit, but your poem moved me.

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