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Poetry
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Where Power Lies
2. War and Piss
In My Name 1: Dragonflies
Young brothers are swatting dragonflies
down by the Euphrates to avoid being stung.
Monstrous complex all-seeing eyes
follow their play; the drones hold still
in mid-air on green translucent wings;
like no known missile, the things dart
with terrifying speed and uncanny aim.
The boys know they are certain to be killed.
A father enters a room from a bombed-out street.
Terrified, he shoots point-blank a man there;
and covers the body with a black plastic sheet,
exempting him from its spent dead-eyed stare
and dread of revenge. He’s a former chef
who trained for murder with invading forces
when café bombs changed his life mid-course.
He doesn’t know who’s issuing the orders,
why his leaders need internal borders,
why they dilute authority with slogans
ditch diplomacy for paranoia
or mix up reality with nightmare.
No one can say how long his job will run.
The father retires exhausted from battle;
he returns in tears to his children
who have escaped the drones
and are now hiding under blankets from scenes
of repetitious TV cartoon violence
where offenders are hammered literally
into the ground to come out misshapen
and yet miraculously viable.
All their father has hoped for
is that the state will protect them,
and the Ministry of War provides plausibility –
a spokesman to disseminate news of freedom
and pre-emptive and inventive self-defence.
Down by the marshes near the river’s edge
awful larvae climb the reeds and shed their skins.
Within hours the dragonflies will have mated
in emphatic and erratic stingless flight
and laid eggs in backwaters of the war.
In time new monsters will be poised to fly.
In My Name 2: Freedom
A soldier, one of ours, enters a room
shoots the cringing man sitting alone.
Offscreen, his colleagues join the hum,
give a nod as the headcam zooms in
on the blood and bedclothes strewn
with the body in the evening gloom.
His lieutenant later tells the platoon
as the shaky video is shown,
“These scum are the reason we’ve come.
Thank god we can bring them freedom.”
In My Name 3: Glory
Old generals in TV studios wear
regimental ties, have three minutes air
to pack the war away like lead soldiers
boxed in cardboard and instant nostalgia.
The commentary by historians heats
the debate, like a gardener who repeats
hand-me-down wisdom from musty old men.
Facts, they claim, were less reliable when
knowledge was thin and prejudice was deep,
and journalists were known expenses cheats.
Now smart newsmen arrived at the war dressed
in flak jackets designed to withstand the best
propaganda, ready to slake their thirst
for reputation putting down the first
gun-deaf bomb-numb rough-drafted history.
By night they’d booze on neat hyperbole,
yet, for all the crap they spoke, body matter
they pissed and shat, or later found splattered
and dried on their beards, they were targets too,
in dreadful danger from collateral truth.
They’d a perfect view in the press hotel
when a friendly tank slipped one well-aimed shell
down the dead photographer’s camera lens
in case someone asked if our war made sense.
In my name 4: Honour
Again a soldier enters a room
shoots an unarmed man in his home.
“I could see him going for his gun.
You saw the same?” he tells his chums.
They agree it’s a job well done,
and one more stinking Haji gone,
In time the night patrol moves on
down the lethal street to comb
for more insurgents in their zone.
They’re our heroes, every one,
fighting an enemy barely known
indiscriminate as stones
that local kids have thrown,
or the honours that will come
in the war that darkness won.
In My Name 5: History
I’ve seen Salamis, Antioch, Sicilia,
I’ve dived at the Hellespont, whored by the Pillars
Dined with Dionysius and played dice with Zeus,
Baited bears in the Lebanon, taken teeth from Jews.
Yet I can’t count the throats I slit, bellies disembowelled,
the bridges burned, the temples, battlefields we fouled,
I couldn’t name one girl we took, enflamed by her screams,
any city that we sacked, or child we wrenched from dreams.
I can’t recall the face of any friend who fell
beside me then, or whether I had known them well.
You’ll never hear my name, and I can’t give you dates.
But war is what I made. And history, and states.
A man enters an auditorium
his rucksack is the bomb.
- Community development