#wwi
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
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
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
War
Started by a single shot
No good or evil
Only humans
People
Stricken by fear
Ordered to fight
No matter how bad it got
Music
Sung by one side
Then the other
Soon everyone sings
Peace
For just one night
A truce struck without generals
A decision made by soldiers
Magic
It's real
This is what it looks like
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 9:14 PM UTC
Two Men
Two Sides
One Goal
Protect Home
Screams Heard
Tears Falling
Men Dying
Flags Waving
The Trenches
Bombs Exploding
Two Men
Have Courage
Venturing Across
No-Man's Land
Meeting in
the middle
To save
The
Creature
In need
Walking Back
Resuming War
Their Treaty
Soon Forgotten
By All
But The
Two Men
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 5:39 PM UTC
Old Harold lived on the second floor
In a darkened room with an old locked door.
My cousins and I used to tease him there,
And he’d chase us out, give us a scare.
I didn’t know exactly who he was,
“He’s a mean old man,” said my favorite cos’.
“Grandma let him live here after Grandpa died.
She doesn’t even like him and we don’t know why.”
When he was out we would take a peek.
Around the ocher walls and his bed we’d sneak.
There was nothing but an iron bunk
And a glass-front chest filled with lots of junk.
One day Old Harold must have complained
About our pestering…we really were pains!
But no parent’s lecture could keep us away.
And Grandma’s yelling at him not to stay.
Old Uncle Harold disappeared for years.
We would make up stories for littler ears.
But one day my father had news of him.
He lived with “a harlot” and his checks she’d skim.
I was old enough to know what it meant
And asked Dad why uncle Harold seemed bent.
“He was gassed in the War in a field at Verdun.”
Dad told me in a tone that left me stunned;
“And was then sent around to pick up the dead.
With the gas and the horror, his mind just went.”
Now I recalled all the times we had teased
And agonized him when we should have pleased.
But now it was too late to apologize,
He was so lost, he wouldn’t recognize
His grown tormentors, when he hardly
Knew my father, the kindly mentor,
Who visited him every week,
Who paid for anything to make him last,
And reminded him of better times past;
Telling him of the time he caught a butterfly
And brought it to show the girls and guys.
How he wanted to let it fly away,
But when the boys had killed it anyway.
He cried and was called a coward then,
And as my father spoke and wept again.
Old Uncle Harold died alone
In a sterile, cold-floored nursing home.
None but Dad came to grieve
And I, only an hour away, shunned
the feeling and just felt numb,
Until Dad called and told me the story
Of Harold’s death and only then
Could I say, “I’m sorry!” to his ghost.
I should have said it long ago; the one who
Maddened him least repented the most.
If I could say “Sorry” for the times we made him shout.
I realised he’d just have yelled, “Get the hell out!”
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
The sound of whistle
A rattle of gunfire
Dodging the shrapnel
Straight over the barbed wire
Heading towards the enemy, I hold my breath
Say a prayer, as we plunge into our death
Through the smoke, mud and lead
Our foe lies just ahead
Clasping my rifle tight
Their guns ablaze with spite
We get so close, yet still too far
With burst of fire I go down
No one near, I choke a cry
No one hears, my time is nigh
See my comrades falling down
In the shrill their voices drown
The wailing shells - our passing bells
Soon my friends we'll meet again
And so we die at Passchendaele
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 1:54 PM UTC
Tie your shuka on your shoulder
Gather your shield and spear of death
The white God for now you are to soldier
Find your courage and take one last deep breath.
You thought war was made of
Those things that you gathered,
You were wrong, so we shoved
A gun and ammo for you to lather.
This is your duty, and that's what you believe
This is your duty, go out and try not to bleed
This is your duty, and that of thy enemies.
You held the gun like we showed
You walked to the place we told
You believed the lies we sold
All while wearing the white man's blindfold.
With a smile and a glimmer of hope
The men you sought
Found you first
And now you rest
Under the dry dirt.
But that's ok for they
Were only shooting
In the name of Duty,
So Hooray!
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 7:07 PM UTC
I went to a
WWI museum today
And as I looked at the
poorly built trenches
and the weapons used
and the gas rising from the ground
and the ships sunk and planes shot down
and the foot shortages and blockades
and the unimaginably high numbers
of the deaths of soldiers and civilians
my stomach twisted and turned
and I realized how terrified I was
of another war
and how every step our country takes
leads us ever closer to one
and how I don’t want another flower
to become a symbol of war
like the poppies that surround
cross-shaped graves
Mar 20, 2018
Mar 20, 2018 at 2:29 PM UTC
Reciting Flanders Field,
My tears soak this hallowed ground,
Single red Poppy tribute,
A remembrance of those fallen.
I stand in silence ………
And silence speaks when words cannot.
“Lest we forget” 11/11/2017
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 1:07 PM UTC
Our time has passed away.
The flower has wilted,
No longer fluid, fresh.
Flowers left by lovers
Who are long cold, dead.
The red of spilt blood
Has bleached love white, white roses
Pain subsidizes not in action,
But in the thought
Of a thousand sounds pounding
In the cold damp.
It reeks of carnage.
War, you have left a void:
A blank in hearts.
How to wander aimlessly
Being neither here nor there?
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 7:03 PM UTC
~ Otto Dix Plate 22 ~
Each night I meet myself in nightmares
I am my own enemy fighting in No-man’s land
I am material and real, yet I barely exist
in my imagination.
There is nothing whole and complete
nothing has retained its shape or structure
everything is splintered into surfaces
in my imagination.
There can be only shreds and shards
only textures, hard lines and spaces
where white light can dance free
in my imagination.
Each night I crawl through ruined houses
along dark passages that close me in
dropping to bottomless depths of myself
in my imagination
There are only axons and dendrites in my mind
electric sparking, all atoms in a crystal night
a grasping hand, a gaping eye disconnected
in my imagination.
Each night I try to find myself in nightmares
I am my own enemy fighting in No-man’s land
I am dark energy and matter, yet I barely exist
in my imagination.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 1:36 PM UTC
He’s gone away forever,
Mother says he’ll be back soon,
But it’s going to be just like dad.
He’s been away since June.
It’s hard to hold back tears
When mother speaks his name
I falter upon telling her
That he’ll never be back again
The night before he went
He sat down by my bed
“You take good care of mother”
That’s the last thing that he said.
He went to war out of hatred
Which blurred his sense of love
For those he held so sacred.
And now he sits above.
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 8:08 PM UTC
The soil is boiling.
Noxious fumes rise from fissures.
Ice cubes and air-fresheners
Are thrown down from the mansion windows
And we are expected to go to war.
To war, where we will get to be
Harvested by machine guns,
Throttled by creeping yellow-green,
And drowned in ice
While our blackened feet fall to pieces.
Blind old Nikolai
Can't see the flames
Burning behind thousand-yard-staring eyes
Sunken into one hundred million hollow faces.
Hollow faces etched into the night
By the glow of mortar blasts
And factory fires
He revels in ineptitude
While our agonizing joy
Is found in the next teasing grey sunrise
As we seek to one day return
To the torn and tear-dampened recollections in our pockets.
While a colonel weeps into a photograph,
The wife of his brother weeps into a telegram
As her cousin is getting his vocal cords clipped out in the streets of Petrograd
And his father is being eviscerated upon factory
Yes, Nikolai;
The soil is boiling
And I will live, I must live
If only to see the day
That it crumbles beneath you.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 7:54 AM UTC
As darkness falls the shelling stopped and the Earth grew ever colder.
It’s taking far too long to die for one badly wounded soldier.
Abandoned by his comrades for the safety of their trench,
He’s dying out in no man’s land amidst the gore and stench,
too late for prayer, too late for Love Too late even for repentance.
He hears the cries for “Mother” from those under the same sentence.
With labored breath he, too, gives voice to the dark forbidding sky.
The last word from his dying lips is the simple question: “Why?”
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 8:55 AM UTC
The convenience of death is too great
not to give in.
And I am found wandering
in old haunted battlefields,
searching for a place for the cannons.
Lay down in the outline of a dead Union soldier's body;
bullet holes riddle his blue uniform.
And the train has not come with the doctors and bandages;
they were all sent to Normandy.
Snow covers the flags and they are buried
in memories of more decent times
Even when I saw the explosions I was still sure
that everyone could make it out alive.
My grandpa's in bed; he's lost his sight,
tells me of losing his leg in a fight
with a German soldier over a piece of bread.
He leaned in and whispered,
"They say love is the only language everyone can understand.
That's not true. It's war."
I could barely speak when the door closed,
looked up and saw we'd joined another battle,
same enemy with a different name.
So I lay down my arms at Arlington National,
and rest in a child's grave.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
Poulton Library and
Adele & I are here to
share with whoever
arrives some thoughts
concerning War and
Literature. Linda sets
us up with chairs and
table, and first here is
delightful surprise: Pat
who I taught thirty years
ago - there will be no
need for me to dig a
trench and put on a
jacket bullet-proof
with tin hat on my
head - Philip Larkin
Alun Lewis, Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen
give staunch support
to Jon Stallworthy's
World War One tome
Anthem for Doomed
Youth: Twelve Poets
but doomed not us
this century later.
(c) C J Heyworth June 2014
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
Beginning in WWI,
The men were at war,
Fighting, killing,
Causing their own Post Traumatic Stress.
And we stayed. Our country, our families needed us.
We replaced them. The men. We replaced them
In their jobs. We did as they did.
We kept the country and the troops
On their feet.
Created weapons.
Kept businesses running,
Did the banking.
The women took charge for once.
The war and the economic trouble got us
On our feet and we did the same
For our nation and our men.
Some did not like that we were working as they had,
Walking in their shoes, but we sure did.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 8:49 PM UTC
she brings him tea,
a piece of cheese late morn
for he has been toiling since dawn
his plane shaving the wood reverently
the old oak speaking, though not complaining,
in a language the man does not understand
a coughing code for loss, forbearance, acceptance,
redemption, he hopes, for the boys keep coming…
first from Ypres, the Verdun,
now the Marne
before, he heaved hewn planks
for the hopeful homes, built their pantries
to be filled with the bread, the kind milk
now the sawn boards are for those who once
watched his labors, but no longer hear the simple
sounds of sanding, sawing
or anything at all
most of the lads do not come home,
their souls and bodies left to rot on the blood sullied grass
or buried shallow, naked in the French soil, but all get a fine coffin
thanks to the carpenter’s wife, whose babe was the first to fall,
who demands for them all, a holy horizontal home to be built
and, empty or not, placed gently in Anglican ground
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 2:30 PM UTC
Here lies Georg.
A hero of war—
The iron youth.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 5:52 PM UTC
A hero of war—
That’s what they called him.
They spent themselves
Trying to find words
To give meaning to his death,
But all was lost and all was
Pointless.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 5:51 PM UTC