He’d scrambled from the wire and the hell,
And hid within a cellar, dark and deep.
He couldn’t face the screaming of the shell,
So traded death for an hour of stolen sleep.
Now he stands within the freezing, slush-brown yard,
A broken lad who simply choked on fear.
The men who hold the rifles find it hard,
To shoot a friend they once had held so dear.
They knew him when he shared a tin of stew,
Saw a picture of his girl in a northern town.
Now they must do what they were ordered to,
And pull the trigger as they watch his tears fall down.
A muffled sob - the signal, sudden, sharp,
The bullets tear a jagged, crimson hole.
No angel sings, no distant pitying harp:
Ten stone of meat that used to be a soul.
Apr 19
Apr 19, 2026 at 6:35 PM UTC
The museum air is too thin—sterile, filtered,
devoid of the scent of wet wool and rotting horse.
I am pinned to a velvet board like a dead moth,
labeled Ref. No. 212, as if a number
could contain the way I felt the resistance
of a ribcage, or the sudden, sickening give
of a young man's future.
They have scrubbed the "souvenir"
until the steel is a mirror reflecting
only their own comfortable faces.
A school group passes, a shuffling gaggle of chewing gum
and digital pings. Their teacher speaks of "Strategy"
and "The Great Push," using words that have
the sharp corners worn off by a century of textbooks.
He doesn't mention the ******* pull of the mud,
the way it tried to swallow the rifle whole,
leaving only me—the cold, hungry extension of a hand
that was shaking too hard to pray.
I remember the taste of the Somme:
an irony tang of blood, a sudden heat, then the long, slow rust.
In the corner, a politician adjusts his poppy,
posing for a lens that loves the solemn smile.
He talks of "The Debt We Owe," while his signature
is already drying on a fresh contract for newer,
faster, quieter ways to open a man’s chest.
I sit in my glass cage, a retired predator,
watching the way they handle the past
like a weapon they’ve forgotten how to safety catch.
They think I am the history,
but I am just the prototype.
Mar 27
Mar 27, 2026 at 2:47 PM UTC
The sky over Tehran is a bruised, heavy grey,
Where the ghosts of Kabul and Baghdad now play.
The bomb fell blind where the children once sat,
Leaving spatters of red on a scorched prayer mat.
Small shoes lie abandoned in dust-choked debris,
Beside notebooks of dreams that will never be.
The "precision" they promised is written in bone,
In a schoolhouse where silence is buried by stone.
They speak of a "finish" that’s "pretty much" done,
Ignoring the cycles they’ve already spun.
From the ruins of Basra to the heights of the Kush
Where the life of a city is ground into dust.
With a regime-change fever and a region on fire,
They’re building a throne on a funeral pyre.
Just another "brief" war with an infinite cost,
Where the world counts the profit while the mothers count the lost.
Mar 12
Mar 12, 2026 at 11:06 AM UTC
the gate is a throat
an ironic warning
it swallowed the living
and spat out their mourning
it left behind the leather shells—
the shoes that walked their final mile
a mountain made of hollow things
the ghost of every stolen smile
the evil geometry of parallel lines
the tracks like teeth in the frozen ground
sleepers didn’t lead to dreams
they simply fed the fiery mound
the birds can sense implosion here
the grass still holds the morning dew
the world bore witness but looked away
the sky saw all, but remained blue.
Feb 1
Feb 1, 2026 at 5:49 PM UTC
The grass carpet painted a vibrant green,
Under the gaze of the stadium lights,
While somewhere, away from the televised scene,
A shadow falls over human rights.
The flags fly high for the beautiful game,
A carnival mask for a nation’s face,
But behind that mask hides a country in shame,
That witnesses fear and the politics of race.
The stars and the stripes catch a cynical breeze,
Above a "free land" where the captive still cry,
Where liberty bows to a state on its knees,
And the "home of the brave" seems a little white lie.
For the term “We the People” is hollow and sold,
Where morals are lowered for favour and gain,
A regime that is bought with a chest full of gold,
While the blood of its people is washed down the drain.
The "Peace Prize" is handed to hands that are stained,
As borders are tightened and families part,
While the masters of optics remain unrestrained,
Tearing the soul from the world’s beating heart.
The stadiums built on the backs of the banned,
Where the anthem is loud but the mercy is thin,
A spectacle staged on a fracturing land,
Where losing the soul is the cost of the win.
So…should the boots hit the pitch? Should the shirts be worn?
Or should a country be met with a field left bare?
To play is to polish the crown of the thorn,
To boycott is showing the world that we care.
For what is a goal in a net made of wire?
And what is a win when the house is on fire?
Jan 24
Jan 24, 2026 at 6:10 PM UTC
I sit where evening shadows haunt the hall,
And touch the ink-stained wood of your old desk;
The silence like a shroud against the wall,
And every memory grows ever more grotesque.
My letters lay unopened and unread,
The prayers still stitched with hope to every word;
The thread is useless now that you are dead,
My nightmares growing stronger, undeterred.
They prattle on of “honour to defend”,
In polished words that cut me like a knife;
They do not know the man I called my friend,
Or how a war can swallow up a life.
I walk the garden where the roses bloom,
But find no comfort in the scented air;
The world is just a vast and empty room,
Broken, I am here, because you are not there.
Jan 4
Jan 4, 2026 at 12:29 AM UTC
We lie where dawn first touched the torn-up plain,
When whistles blew and faith was lost too fast;
Morning exploded through smoke and fire and pain,
And found us falling before noon had passed.
Above us birds still dared to rise and sing,
Their notes unharmed by the thundering guns;
They soared where shells could never reach a wing,
While down below the earth consumed its sons.
Her folded letters pressed against my heart,
Her prayers stitched tightly in each letter sent;
Now mud and steel have torn our lives apart,
And youth lies scattered where hope once went.
Do not forget us in the passing of time,
Or dress these fields in phrases clean and brave;
We choked on gas to hold that fragile line,
And rotted in silence for the things we strived to save.
If you should walk this landscape scarred and wide,
And feel the silence weightless in the air,
Forget the flags, the speeches, and the pride,
Just know we’re here, because you were not there.
Jan 4
Jan 4, 2026 at 12:27 AM UTC
It’s a strange situation we find ourselves in.
It feels like a war that we just have to win But we can’t see the enemy.
The enemy’s unknown.
And the warzone?
It's not landscaped with minarets and domes.
It’s right here in our country, our towns and our houses.
Attacking our children, our parents, our spouses.
How can we fight what we simply can’t see?
This isn’t a rifle that’s pointed at me
But a cough.
A sneeze.
A shake of a hand.
There’s fear gripping hard on the folk of this land
And it’s total confusion that presently runs
Through a people where a virus strikes more fear than guns.
We need to wake up.
Look around us and see:
It’s not “just a flu that won’t affect me.”
It’s a killer.
It’s proving right now on our Earth:
It threatens the old—and those recently birthed.
It’s time that our young generation stands tall,
Thinks not just of ‘me’
But of folk one and all.
For the first time we have to now consider others.
Respect and protect people’s fathers and mothers.
For this is an enemy...
That feeds on their breath.
A weapon we carry...
That brings about death.
So now?
Take the time to look at your mum.
Realise that someone else carries the gun
That could take away the person who gave you your life;
Who loved you no matter what trouble or strife you found yourself in.
Recognise it now our sisters and brothers.
You carry the gun that can take away others.
If we fight this together—
Yet strangely apart.
If we think with our head
As well as our heart.
Then one day?
We will beat it.
One day?
Be free.
But first...
Think of others.
And not just of “me.”
Jan 2
Jan 2, 2026 at 8:57 AM UTC
The red-petaled mouth of the soil is closed at last,
Where iron once screamed and the sky turned white as bone;
The seasons have buried the whistle’s final blast,
And replaced the flesh and steel with rows of stone.
I do not remember the "pride" or the "noble end,"
I only remember the weight of the men who fell;
The way my mud inhaled a dying friend,
And muffled the echoes of that man-made hell.
I watch as the strangers walk through the quiet rows,
With cameras and poppies and feet that do not tire;
They stand where the daisy and the wild clover grows,
Upon their roots once fed by blood and fire.
So fold up your maps, for you’ve found where the journey ends,
And lay down the grief you have carried over time;
I have guarded the ground where he fell among his friends,
His memory is yours, but his body is mine
Jan 2
Jan 2, 2026 at 8:47 AM UTC