In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.

Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.

From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.

Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.

Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.

Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens


Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.

Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war

Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains

Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.

They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.

But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.


© M.L.Emmett

Sun swollen
reddening as it sank
that brutal ****** disc
scored by church steeples
and chimney stacks
almost lost in the drifting haze
of sulphurous yellow
and char-black smoke.

Duck boards dip
into the sodden earth
as men ***** along in conga lines
holding tight the pack of the man
in front, lest they should slip
lose quick their footing
be ****** down and smothered
by mud.

The walls of the tunnels
are packed earth
rich with blood and bone
bits and pieces of human
anatomy dangle and hang
as if posed by an artist
with a strange and cruel eye
for detail.

The scrabble for fox holes
and rough scraped ditches,
anywhere, below the line of fire.
The ting and ****-bang
of a night of action
The whistle, the dash
and the forward push
counted more in men
than metres.                                                                

© M.L.Emmett

For nine days the artillery barrage
rained down on us
that June of summer in the Somme
machine gunners like me waited
in our concrete bunkers deep in the earth

When the shelling stopped
we rushed to the surface
and began our job of mowing down
the slow walking British Infantry
stoically advancing as if in another war
in another time where they might choose
to die bravely and with honour
a hero fighting for his life
his king and country

But here he dies unknown
by the chance turning of my gun
in his direction at that one moment
and the random number of bullets
left to fire.



© M.L.Emmett

It has a new scale of reference
vast, vicious and unforgiving
death for millions will be anonymous
machine gun arbitrary and indiscriminate
shelled and shocked, barraged and buried
no whole corpse to recognise as human
no remains to mourn and grieve
just rich blood and bone for Poppies
growing strong in the Flanders' fields.

Landscape resculpted to barest bone
earth desecrated and destroyed
every old tree and young bush uprooted
tossed like feathers to the blackened sky
debris swirling in the clouds of poison
gas and the putrid stench of burning flesh
in pyres that smoke and stink for days
just fertile ash and dust for Poppies
growing strong in the Flanders' fields.


© M.L.Emmett

At the Crematorium
white smoke curls
and coils
and drifts
- a wisp
of your hair.

Blood-red rich roses
thrive in bone rich soil
velvety smooth
and secret-scented
- the inside skin
of your wrists.


          
© M.L.Emmett

In Winnipeg
they dig the winter graves
in autumn
before the sun sleeps
and the ground freezes.

They guess the number
of holes to dig.
They respect the cold
and the winter dead.

Death prediction
is a fine art
in Winnipeg.  


© M.L.Emmett

On the mud flats of Padma Delta
where the mighty Ganges slides
into the Bay of Bengal
ships come to die.

Rusting oil tankers,
container ships from Panama
passenger liners,
and cargo ships from Zanzibar
North Sea fishing boats
research vessels and mother ships
anything that floats
each one has made its final trip.

Steel Leviathans
low tide beached
oil-slick stuck.

Metal monoliths
****** deep
into black sand.

The people of Sitakunda
come marching, ants
across the slippery surface
of diesel sand
to pick the carcasses apart.

Barefoot, with only blow torches
hammers and brute strength
wrenching rivets, nuts and bolts
breaching beams and deck
splitting welded seams
until the hulls are gutted
ribbed struts broken down
and torn from the edges of shape

Bit by bit
they scour and empty
right down to the core.

Bit by bit
they carry *****
to the waiting shore.

Where melting pots are kept boiling
giant stock pots stewing goodness
in a broth
but metallic flavours and oily spiced stench
hang in the misty bleakness of the bay

Skeleton hulks shift and ride
lurching, lifting with the tide
rolling, dangerous still
collapsing, with groaning creak
to maim, to crush and ****
the daring, the slow and the weak.

© M.L.Emmett