Courtesy of lily-livered missiles

(Tactical? Strategic? Who on Earth cares?)

Ukrainians lose the rest of their lives,

While eating lunch or dinner in their flats.

My thoughts drift to twittish highland royals,

And double-barrelled toffs who hunt for stags,

Which bleed and stagger round for days on end

Before they die in bouts of howling pain.

It is all part of a continuum:

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Written in March 2023: one year on.

(...sees races, eras, dates, generations,

The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together"

Walt Whitman, Kosmos)

Only fragile glass

                                   holds the cold

                                                                night's times at bay:

each star above the beech

owning its mo...

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Some people wilfully tread on spiders,

But I don’t.

Some squash ladybirds for fun:

That’s not my style.

Some laugh as they crush an ant:

I can’t do that.

You can see where this is going:

Some people are just different.

They are born that way;

Or do they become like that?

They can’t all be sadists;

Sometimes it’s just circumstances.

So, could I become t...

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It’s only anonymity

Which makes us go to war;

When soldiers meet up face to face

They wonder what it’s for.

They talk of friends and relatives,

About whom they all care;

Discuss the beauty of the world,

Which they delight to share.

They do not bow to nation states

Or military types,

Whose mission is to keep them down

By tapping on their stripes.

T...

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The sky looked weary 

Pale and colourless 

As were we

I laid down my rifle

and thought of what I'd told her

I'd left it in the hollow of her mind

In the place where dreams ascend 

So, when the day came 

they could carry 

all that grief & sorrow away

and feed it to the clouds

for when they felt like crying

And on that day

Laden with the burden of

a thousand...

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You get the feeling he would cross the road

To not to have to give you time of day,

Though in his flowered garden, taut, he dotes

On children, bouncing them upon his knee,

And will cherish every stricken insect

Like a father cradling his newly born.

In working hours, required stiffness

Does not prevent him cracking the odd joke.

He says it’s nothing personal (it is);

It ...

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in the end everything seemed

to be superfluous,

our whims, our worries,

our everyday words

whirling in between

the four corners of any statutory affairs

in the end everything was

so predictable like the unfolding

of any well rehearsed drama

that our words became silent

like the tired desert

after the longest day of the year

in the end everything pushed

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It’s bizarre that Eurovision,

That riot of drivel and camp,

Became a combatant in war:

Builders bopped to the Ukraine song.

Politicians of every sort

Are decked out in blue and yellow.

Hollywood types, shocked in their awe,

Enlist and worship at the shrine.

Lottery winners in hard hats

View body bags through telescopes.

Pray silence for the giant screen.

The workin...

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Wars are the usual bag of tricks:

Fought by the same class of suckers,

Straight out of factory or school,

Uncomplaining and scared to death.

Heads crammed with patriotic guff,

They squirm in trenches at the front

And finish dead or short of limbs.

Those who survive, when they return

To a country fit for heroes,

Are told, in no uncertain terms,

To shut up and to know t...

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It is not a fable or a fairy tale,

even a child could understand my plea

that is why I speak loudly and vehemently

I am outraged to see

how those who wield power,

supported by uniforms and boots

see us as nincompoops,

weaving narratives of a distorted history

as if nothing had been there

Their very accommodated stories

build paper monuments to their heroes o...

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