THE CUPBOARD OF THE YESTERDAYS

The War marches
across the map

on little coloured pins

blood red for us &
bright green for them.

The colours faltering
in the candlelight

after the lights
had gone out.

One can still see holes
from the previous War

that pinned men down
so that they

would never move again
they the never returning.

THE CUPBOARD OF THE YESTERDAYS
falling from mother's sleepy hand.

"War is a cruelly destructive thing..."
it both begins & ends.

Men wriggle under
coloured pins & die.

Saki smiles sardonically
from THE TOYS OF PEACE.

I move a pin to where
father maybe is.

I am glad
mother sleeps at last.

In the somewhere of now
a bullet splinters bone

my father falls

the agony of the moment
revealed in the telegram

that will come
a month later.

Father has become
History.

Mother will read her Saki
and cry and try

not to let me see
her cry.

I, a small boy
can't cry.

Death appears
like a fairy story.

What War
awaits me?

*

The Cupboard of the Yesterdays," a short story written by Saki aka H. H. Munro a few years before he was killed on the Western Front in 1916,.

"War is a cruelly destructive thing," said the Wanderer, dropping his newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively into space.

But the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone; the dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will slowly settle down over the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muersteg Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those familiar outlandish names and things and places, that we have known so long as part and parcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away into the cupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and the wars of the Guises.

At the start of the First World War Munro was 43 and officially over-age to enlist, but he refused a commission and joined the 2nd King Edward's Horse as an ordinary trooper. He later transferred to the 22nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, in which he rose to the rank of lance sergeant.

More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still too sick or injured. In November 1916 he was sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, during the Battle of the Ancre, when he was killed by a German ******. According to several sources, his last words were "Put that ****** cigarette out!"

Munro has no known grave.

TALKING TO MY BROTHER

"Pssst....pssst...it's me!"
whispered the tree.

The aspen quivered.
Shivered in the sudden breeze.

"You..eh...talking
to me?"

I dared to
question the tree.

Tree talking!
Hope nobody hears me!

Nobody told me this is
how grief would be.

"It's me...yer brother
for ****'s sake!"

The tree getting
slightly annoyed.

"But...yer dead!"
I said.

"Ok..." snapped the tree.
"Let's not go there!"

Ok ok I thought.
Keep yer leaves on.

"Yer a bit more poplar
than you used to be!"

I quipped
with a smirk.

The tree
was not amused.

"Why an aspen then?"
I enquired.

"Don't you remember
any of the mythology you taught me!"

I wasn't having the best
of this conversation.

"Yer aspen dear brother
communicates with the next world!"

The tree could see
the fear flit across my face.

"Remember when we was little
we promised that whoever

died first would come back
tell the other...what was what?"

"But that was a kid's promise!"
I quibbled.

"Promise is a promise!"
the tree waved its branches.

"I was afraid that if I appeared
as you knew me...you would be scared."

It paused as a kid
threw a stone and ran away.

"It would give you a heart attack
And then where would be be!"

"Dead right!" I mused.
I had to admit the tree was talking sense.

Sure enough the old ticker
isn't what it used to be.

"So what's it like being a tree then!"
Trying to make light conversation like.

"Much better than being
dead...that's what!"

A jay came and perched
on the tree's thoughts.

"****...the light is dying!"
rustled its leaves.

"Meet me tomorrow
at noon."

The tree commanded
beginning to lose its voice.

"Ok!" I said choking up.
Kissing the tree,

"Alright Bud" I said.
"See ya Bud!" said the tree.

"Tomorrow it is
then!"

THE MERE MAID'S TALE

I feel like a mermaid
dripping on his kitchen floor
I want to drown in his love

I feel mythical
he just thinks I'd be nice
saucy

I sleep in the bath
he only wants to part my legs
I flick my tail at him

I balance on my tail
run( so to speak )
through the roaring rain

alas I climb out of
the fairytale
he yet another bland Prince in 2-D

I run away to sea
can taste the salt on the wind
its waves welcome me

I need
a Hans Christian Anderson man
a he who...understands me

GRANDAD TENDS HIS DAHLIAS

the fog
walks among the tombs
"I encounter my first ***

he was a man
he looked just like me
as if I were...killing myself!"

stretching back
through space & time
the instant of that moment

the German falls
beside a tomb
like a badly written play

Grandad bayonettes
the German...looks surprised
to be dying

Grandad plunges the bayonette in
twists it about
the German almost grins

then the dance
of the living & the dying
in strict time

the German goes down
on one knee
as if proposing to Death

Granddad stabs the German
through the lifeline
of his left hand

the dying German's
left outstretched hand
like a man about to sing a song

"As he fell
his hand touched my hand
'This...' I thought '...is hell!'"

all his life
the touch...that touch
impossible to shake off

Grandad tends his dahlias
the dying German
still clouding his eyes

THE SNAKES AND LADDERS OF TIME

she gasps
at the faded photograph.
a crease hides my smile

"What...you. . .
you
were four?"

she's never considered
this before
I smile at her disbelief

that this fat old man
could ever have been
surely not her age

she acts as if she is
the first four
ever to be

ahhhhh
the snakes
and ladders of time

"Oh it's a long time since
I was four...but four
...I was for sure!"

I laugh at her incredulity
"So where did your four go!"
she asks like a defence lawyer

turning to
the judge and jury
of her lined up dolls

"And how did you get so old?"
she clinches the conversation
convincingly

yes...where did I go
I question myself
four year olds never die

they play hide and seek
in the minds
of fat old men

popping mischievously up
with a now and then yell
"Here I be!"

"But if you were four
once upon
a time ago..."

I feel her
argument
close about me

"Then you should know
why
I don't want to go to bed!"

I check with my former
four year old self
sure enough he says: "Yup!"

I have to admit
she
has got me...there

trapped by my child's
impeccable logic
...******

and so we have 4
extra Snakes and Ladders
played with all her

extreme hysteria
stops only
when I fall asleep

she covers me
with a towel
from the bathroom

puts her self
to bed thank
you very much

tells Mummy
"Shhhhhhhh...
Daddy's sleeping!

MY WAR

the bomb fell on the graveyard
the dead laughed
they were used to being dead

the moss had eaten their names
the dead could not remember
who they were

a batch of kids
clutching gas masks
afraid of the sky

blackberries and air raid sirens
his name on cardboard around his neck
they were living the war

the war
had invaded their lives
bombs had become normal

the gas mask
left out in the storm
filling up with rain

he didn't like the gas masks
they turned people
into insects

"A carrot on a stick!"
instead of an ice cream
"but then I'd never had ice cream!"

"Carrots can't
stand them to this day!"
clouds reflected in his eyes

Daddy was up in the air
fighting in the sky
I never cried when he died

he went up in the air
and stayed there
"Next door to Heaven!" Mum says

strange creatures in a field
cows I think they're called
I'm afraid they'll eat me

PEELING APPLES SOMEWHERE IN 1914

the War not yet
a week old
already tears that will last years

she can still see
his pale hands
peeling apple after apple

the apples
looking startled
**** beside their skins

the naked apples
the flamenco swirl of their skins
his hands pale as death

now where the apples lay
that day
the telegram of his death

she can still see him
turning into the shadows
throwing her an apple with a smile

she is angry with him
for dying
her love not enough to protect him

under her apron
the baby kicks
it will have his smile