When there are (almost) no words

The photo below is now famous and rightly so - it shows a four-year old girl in a refugee camp, displaced by the Syrian Civil War, surrendering to a long-lens camera because she thinks it is a gun. There are almost no words for how wong this is, and in how many ways, nor for how angry it makes me (and many, many others). Almost. But it was suggested as a prompt by I am not a silent poet after much discussion about it on their facebook page and so I tried to articulate my anger...

In Atman Camp

I see you, power-hungry man,
stomach full of
belligerence and bile.
I see your guns and tanks,
their barrels,
your ill-concealed excitement
and over-compensation.
I see the lists of dead and wounded,
missing, disappeared,
bodies empty as shell-casings
swept into drifts,
their blue lips
your Viagra kiss.
I see the conquered territory
you piss on,
a few feet here,
a few feet there –
and I feel its never-again
poppy-strewn familiarity.
I see your callow excuses
for why you need a war
and why the suffering,
not yours,
is worth it.

I see all this
in the eyes of Adi Hudea,
one tiny refugee
surrendering to a more benevolent
sort of shot
than the one that took her father,
massacred at Hama.
I see her innocence
taken in infancy,
I see what you have done,
you and all your kind,
and I call you out.

Photo by Osman Sağırlı

Remembrance when there's no-one to remember

Last night I performed a sequence of new First World War poems as part of Eastleigh Museum's WWI centenary exhibition. Whatever your feelings about the centenary events and remembrance, for many people it is a deeply emotional issue. So, when I was asked to write on this subject I knew it would be difficult, not because of my own feelings, but because (a) the audience was likely to care what I did in a way that probably isn't usually the case, (b) it would be a 'traditional' audience - not what I'm used to, and (c) it risked breaking one of the golden rules, namely 'write what you know about'. I was fairly confident I could take care with (a) and (b) - there are times to seriously challenge an audience, but this was never going to be one of them, so 'contemporary but respectful' was the tone to aim for. However, (c) was tricky. I don't come from a military family, my historical period of choice is early medieval, and 'the horrors of war' were covered by the poets who were actually there - Wilfred Owen and so on - and I have no urge to compete with them! However, after a bit (well, a lot) of thought I came up with the idea of everything being second-hand as no-one who experienced WWI is still alive. Everything we know is from books, recordings, film, photographs, eye-witness accounts, museum artifacts etc. This became the underlying concept for my writing and, even though my set was book-ended by Geoff from the Chameleon Theatre Company reciting a selection of well-known poems of the time (yes, those I didn't want to compete with), the positive reception suggests it worked and I'm happy with the way the set turned out. So, here is the opening poem from my set - I hope you enjoy it.


Spectres

What is left?
Now all the eye-witnesses have gone
everything is second, third, fourth hand
and so on. Black-and-white photos,
grainy stills from rare films,
clips of aerial reconnaissance
or TV documentaries,
interviews made just in time,
books and files of history and opinion
filling shelf-miles,
terabytes of networked drives,
and artefacts preserved behind museum glass.
Post-bombardment celluloid from Paaschendale,
Photoshopped and mashed up with
War of the Worlds tripods
ignites a YouTube debate about
what is dissing or respectful.
For this is ancient history to most,
something abstracted
on interactive whiteboards,
as homework,
in GCSE revision notes
and weekend battle re-enactments.
The era of slow massed ranks
encouraged by threats
and prods of officers’ revolvers
has passed unmourned
along with Haig and Joffre;
no more suicidal nods
over-the-top tugs
of a thousand, million forelocks,
for ‘our betters’ are passé,
and the post-traumatic
casualties of nerves and mind
have at least been pardoned, still
the idea of some sort of heroism lingers,
the echo of, for good or ill,
our martial ancestry,
all those who chose to fight and fall,
and as poppies fade at last from red to white,
what is left?
Remembrance, not memory, is all.

Chrome poles and foxholes

With the West now bombing Isis, whatever good that will do, I couldn't help noticing that Southampton has a lap-dancing club of the same name, and so a little satire was born - currently a work-in-progress...

The day the West dropped bombs on Isis

Cash in the wasitband’s medieval,
objectifying, shallow – yes, but not evil,
seedy, that’s true, thoughts unclean,
small uprisings, some scenes are obscene,
barbaric acts need reprisals it seems
but such punishment’s too harsh, in extremis,
high explosives used on unarmed ecdysists,
the day the West dropped bombs on Isis.

Some general somewhere, deep in the Pentagon,
bullet-headed, a limited lexicon,
lost by long words, confused the terms
Terpsichore and terrorists,
gyrators and jihadists,
shaking their fundaments
doesn’t make them fundamentalists.

Military Intelligence didn’t check their facts,
planned the attack using Google Maps,
managed to mix up bunkers in Iraq
with a slightly cheesy city-centre strip-shack,
as dancers wiggled on laps and tables,
missiles were launched from a secret Naval
base, seconds later, dumb target’s struck,
one interrupted a private booth-fuck,
shenanigans costly, rude, uncouth,
the other hit the dancefloor via the roof
and exploded, scattering sequins and G-strings,
middle-aged men who seek releasings,
ripped by lip-gloss shrapnel, no more sleazing
at the go-go girls blown through the ceiling,

peeling off layers of lurex and rubber,
shredded epidermal cover,
no teasing rhythm to this stripping,
as club-beats are cut,
lust lies bleeding,
all gone Pete Tong, gold thongs
hang limp from rubble,
lager and worse dripping
from stag-night posses caught, gaping in fishnets
and rags of High Street smart-casual,
congealing as the dust settles, dead confetti,
flakes of foundation, orange as amaretti
no longer concealing crisped skin,
smoke black as Kate Moss’ caked mascara,
Rimmel’s London Blitz look,
billows from kitsch curtains
and pink satin pillows as they shrivel,
shrink like recreational dental-floss knickers

and the emergency light’s first tentative flicker
illuminates a lone perspex platform stiletto
lying on its side, still clasping something varnished,
chipped but glitter-sparkling,
part of a daughter of Isis,
goddess of slaves and sinners,
mother of Horus,
who could not be protected by doormen
or hands-by-your-sides no-touching rules,
all just damaged collateral,
another day in the death
of the War of Error,
mongered by fools.

Trees and guns both shoot

This year is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World war. Much will be written about it. Some of it will be idiotic and self-serving like the comments made by Michael Gove recently. Hopefully such stupidity will be in a tiny minority. Here's my tree-themed take.

Baumkrieg/Peacetime

I

Ash-keys unlock oaken doors,
sycamores rescue drowning acorns
by sending helicopter-seeds
and lifefloats –
catkins yowl to be let in,
dogwood barks to be let out.

Both shed leaves upon the floor.

II

Willows weep for fallen deadwood comrades,
elders send saplings to the Front –
they’re only following orders.
It seems just yesteryear that they were buds and blossoms,
blooming on the may,
flying warning flags from beech-masts –
now thorns are set, fixed as bayonets,
sound the advance,
march across the Nullarbor.

Some come home
missing twigs and branches,
bearing lop-sided crowns and leaf-scars –
at first tended like heirloom bonsai,
but later, still unsightly and now seeming foreign,
they are planted in the corner
of some forgotten arboretum.