The 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

School friends swam and laughed in sandy craters

And there I was walking

By Goat's Water, the Old Man looking down

As he had for all my life 

And all those other lives before

The smell of wet bra...

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Why I went back 

A posthumous poem in the voice of Walter Tull – 28.04.1888 to 25.03.1918

Until you’ve been under fire

hunkered down in some funk hole

you’ll never know terror, the horror

or the damage to the soul

that just one barrage can do,

before you ever hear the whistle’s blast

that, sadly it’s true

for all too many,

signals this’ll be your last.

So...

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Blood Brothers In Arms

My uncle Jack nearly died

in the battle of the Somme.

Crawling from his trench

he was the victim of the bomb

that threw him in the air

and killed his brother, Tom.

Deafened by the blast

and blinded by the mud

he lay upon the battlefield

drowning in his blood,

praying God would save him

as only his God could.

But the gods ...

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A while ago, I was reminded by my brother that our grandfather had fought in the Battle of the Somme, on the Western Front in 1916, where he was wounded and evacuated back home. This is for him, and for everyone.

Snow and Lightning

When winter paints the churned land white,

and splintered trees hang like sentinel flames,

snowfall that dusts bloody parapet stains

hardens to a sa...

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One summer Morning

Came them the young boys in their thousands

One summer morning just like this

Reaching out for a mother’s kiss

The sturdy arm of a father

Came then the bullets and splintering shell

Mud and blood and ripping wire

Into smoke black and buggered hell

They’re still there in the fields beneath the flowers

In their thousands where they fell

In ...

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Look, I like having legal rights; to be a citizen not just a subject,
but I’m not without doubts about this great European project.
No, I don’t fear drowning in seas of asylum seekers some’d prefer out of my backyard
but the far right’s rise darkens my night skies and I find some truths really are quite hard.
Yes, the status quo is twisted so some not so nice people do too well off it,
b...

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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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