The Fraud

Such an edifying sight, were those poppies, this Remembrance Sunday,

on the Cenotaph railings, twenty times larger than life,

which were bunting-bedecked by flag-shaggers’ Union Jacks,

statements - or warnings - to “them illegulls, them immigrunts”

across the road - who’ve lived and worked here for as long as I have.

Rem...

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Those bells rang and rang and rang
In absence of all now gone from us
All in this earth their life lives long
As those bells clatter the silent songs

Youth slaughtered cattle in this earth 
For red bright poppies that sprout to life
Breaking through braved blooded soil
Enriched by a youth of lost loved souls 

Time fated a 100 years ago by chance 
Angelic eyes and soft youthful faces
...

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Red Poppies On An Autumn Day

Never forgotten – here to stay,

a symbol of the hurt and pain

where young men will forever lay.

The old man sells and we will pay

to wear a token for the slain -

never forgotten – here to stay.

Would they have approved? Who can say

If what was lost was worth the gain.

Red poppies on an autumn day

They had little choice ...

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I stood in the shadow of that historic Tower

Before a rain-drenched sea of red

The glistening ceramic poppies like a shower

Washing clean wrongs and lives long since dead.

From out of the gloom marched a Warder

(With a young guardsman bugler in tow)

Who soon called the living to order

And read out the names we would know.

We were witnesses to the sort of weather

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Each November we are reminded, watching poppies fall...

Each represents a life surrendered answering duty's call.

And later, in the weeks that follow, when snowflakes fill the sky,

The mind is filled with thoughts of those whose lives had soon passed by.

Each fleeting flake a forfeited future deprived of its true worth -

And like the poppies - sent to fall and fade back in the earth...

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