"bayonet" poems
1227
My Triumph lasted till the Drums
Had left the Dead alone
And then I dropped my Victory
And chastened stole along
To where the finished Faces
Conclusion turned on me
And then I hated Glory
And wished myself were They.
What is to be is best descried
When it has also been—
Could Prospect taste of Retrospect
The tyrannies of Men
Were Tenderer—diviner
The Transitive toward.
A Bayonet’s contrition
Is nothing to the Dead.
26.5k
White-furred hill flowers bow
Gust-bent,
Wet in April snow,
Lavender beneath their
Downy coats.
Tender soldiers of spring
Grasp wind-blown gravel steeps,
Stand to beckon brown grass,
Soft-call the life in sapless trees
To ring with green again
Against Old Bully Winter’s
Blustering.
Quaking aspens,
Earliest to leaf in yellow-green,
Curling grama grasses,
Tough food for buffalo,
Cannot boast first life each Montana spring;
Only zombie-lichens,
Rock-fast mosses
Throw off winter’s death
Before the crocus' rise.
On eastern Montana hills
No street-hemmed dandelions
Colonize in chute-dropped ranks;
No time-tamed tulips
Live on wind-round knolls.
Here, the yucca’s bayonet-sharp ******
Here, the wild onions’ scent-strong hold;
But these arrive after early chill,
Following the purple crocus on the hill.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 8:36 AM UTC
Desire and
All the sweet pulsing aches
And gentle hurtings
That were you,
Are gone into the sullen dark.
Now in the night you come unsmiling
To lie with me
A dull, cold, rigid bayonet
On my hot-swollen, throbbing soul.
6.7k
**We are a funny lot
As in, seriously… we delve into ‘funny’ a lot
Very rarely does a day go by
That I don’t come across something that cracks my funny bone…
Or as a Kenyan would put it ‘makes me just die!’
Body bag
The Kenyan
This specimen of human is always quick and capable of ridiculing anyone’s apparent "swag"
Everyone gets a turn here… so do not huff when you’re ‘it’
There must be a reason you joined this dissing game… this unique Kenyan version of ‘tag’
Just remember
The rules are simple, really
Keep it above the belt, unless upon exception...
They also clearly allow one to feign concession
Yes, these rules highly encourage strategic deception
Kind of like what our politicians do before the main election
But also if you paint a target on your back… you will get shot at...
By everyone… and I mean everyone
I haven’t seen anyone do that and elude the social media firing squad yet
Computers and phones in this case, acting as the internet's version of the bayonet
And watch closely if you’re ‘it’… for the inevitable, the friends that will stab you in the back
It’s bound to happen, as much as this may ****
The memes will come by the truck load… in what may seem like a self driven truck…
With a life of its own
Just ask Susan Mirfat
The most recently owned!
We’re a funny lot I tell you
Loose cannons almost
Our leaders’ shenanigans, our parents’ semantics and our own clownish antics…
Prove that despite…
How mature as a country we've become…
We’re still all just a bunch of children, inside.**
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 1:15 AM UTC
And in the whitest dark I
Ask for only that
To keep
Me there, for just the span of
Your snowglobe smile
That aftershock nightlight in the
Afternoon heat
Wait for me there
With your bayonet heart
Hands
Shoulders
Beneath the powerline
Wire, asleep but for me
Awake but for
The rest
And doze after
Half-light dreams and
Headrush spotlights that
Blur and
Mar my
Little love frame
Bright night air, fill
Every niche
Till whole is all
And all is this
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 11:05 PM UTC
O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies
Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws
**** and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,
Gag of dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies
The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,
The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,
Shaped in old armour and oak the countenance of a dunce
To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,
And a tear-stained widower grief drooped from the lashes
To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive
Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses
By the curve of the **** mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.
4.5k
1.
There was the tremor of leaves,
a rustle of bayonet grass
parried the multihued calm
of dawn's smeared light.
"This is what we trained for," the captain said.
We hunkered behind stacked bags of sand.
2.
Filigreed shafts of light pierce
the bullet perforated leaf canopy,
bellowed yells punctuate the swirl
and buffet of turbulent air:
“Contact”, “2 O’Clock”, “Incoming”, “
"Moving”, “Reloading”, “Ammo”.
3.
Fingers twitch, the grit of soil
twisted through their grip;
moon slashed carcasses glint, spent shells,
Earth exhales a vermillion mist,
rising, echoless, in this cathedral of leaves.
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 1:19 AM UTC
He tosses in his sleep
He never gets a good night's rest
He tosses in his sleep
He never gets a good night's rest
His mind is tired but can't control what's in his chest
She tosses in her sleep
Dreaming of a better place
She tosses in her sleep
Dreaming of a better place
She gave up looking and now she's got tears on her face
He wears a cigarette
She wears a bayonet
He drives a beater and she drives a swift Corvette
He's not a cheater and she's one he won't forget
He's got a plan
But doesn't know how to start
He's got a plan
But doesn't know how to start
He's too young to understand the language of his heart
She's got a picture
But hasn't developed it yet
She's got a picture
But hasn't developed it yet
All she sees is a silent silhouette
He wears a cigarette
She wears a bayonet
He drives a beater and she drives a swift Corvette
He's not a cheater and she's one he won't forget
He wrote his name and number
On the missionary of his hotel
He wrote his name and number
On the missionary of his hotel
As he laid it down he felt his heart begin to swell
She called him up
And they talked over a drink or two
She called him up
And they talked over a drink or two
Now all their reservations are made for two
May 8, 2016
May 8, 2016 at 1:11 AM UTC
This isn’t the first Saturday night ,
When your muse will gently kiss a faded parchment ,
And give birth to verses
That will keep me awake all night.
This isn’t the first Saturday night ,
When I will spill more ink than a wounded soldier ,
Writing his last letter back home ,
From the treacherous trenches
Of scarlet love.
But then the trenches I sought refuge in,
Are more treacherous than the rusted bayonet ,
With which he will script ,
The final chapters of his life .
And yet like him ,
If there’s one thing I have come to believe in ,
Then it’s this :
There is more comfort ,
In believing ,
In an unshakable absolute ,
Than there is in hiding ,
Beneath the mills of woolen warmth.
And
There is more naked grief ,
In letting your dreams ,
Be hinged to uncertainties,
Than there is in daring ,
To brave the winter without your warmth.
And yet you wonder?
Why I detest absolutes,
Which need a blanket of uncertainties ,
To survive the chill of a Saturday night ,
A night which as it drags on,
Like a frozen Nicholas sleigh ,
Seems to mock every fiber of hope in my being ,
Fibers that I unravelled to adorn
The dwelling of My absolute.
This isn’t the first Saturday Night when the tale will remain incomplete
Without that innocent question I crave to answer
For you are my absolute ,
Uncertainty.
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 11:54 AM UTC
The art of the geniuses
is packed like overstuffed crayons
in the alleyways of my city.
That one is picking his nose.
There is the bench-sleeper.
Here comes the nomad with the stroller.
I watch them carefully like
a soldier on an ambush,
bayonet at the ready,
a little drunk on
self-worth.
They approach and I pause.
I put the camera to my face
and press the shutter.
Turning to me their eyes
beam sorrow.
The nose picker slept alone last night,
the nomad is still lost.
In black and white they
will forever navigate the crawl spaces
of my mainframe.
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 12:47 AM UTC
EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into the summer's southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel.
3.2k
I was sent to work at the old Repat.
It was forty years since the war,
Those ancient diggers would sit and swear
At the pain of the limbs they wore,
The wounds would open as years went by,
They’d come for another slice,
That war was never over for them,
And morphine was paradise.
I saw one veteran struggle and curse
As he ripped at the buckles and straps,
The new prosthesis had rubbed him raw
As his knee began to relapse.
He tore the leg from his wounded stump
Sat on his bed, and roared,
Then swung the article over his head
And flung it across the ward.
The others had ducked as the leg took off
And bounced off the opposite wall,
‘I’ll have to report you,’ the nurse exclaimed,
‘It’s a good leg, after all!’
‘You wear it then,’ was the man’s response,
‘For it’s driving me insane,
What would you know of Flanders Fields?
You wouldn’t deal with the pain!’
My job was to settle and calm him down
So I asked him about his leg,
‘When and where did you lose it, Dig?’
The veteran tossed his head.
‘You’ve heard of a place called Flanders Fields
Where the bullets came in like hail?
Well, I was there with the Anzac’s, son,
At a place called Passchendaele.’
‘Our Generals were trying to ****** us,
I swear, on my mother’s head,
They kept on sending us over the top
Until half of the men were dead.
The German gunners would enfilade
As we struggled against the mud,
I’ll never forget the battlefield,
It was spattered with bones and blood.
They’d send artillery shells across
At the height of a soldier’s knee,
We’d watch them come as they parted the grass,
They were Grasscutters, you see!
Well, I was running with bayonet fixed
And praying for God’s good grace,
When suddenly I was lying there,
I’d tumbled, flat on my face.’
‘It’s strange that I never felt a thing,
When the Grasscutter got me,
It took a while ‘til I saw my leg
Was gone, from under the knee.
But that was the end of the war for me,
The end of the life I’d known,
I spent some time back in Blighty, then
I came on a ship, back home.’
I never chided those men in there
Though they’d curse and swear, and roar,
For every man was a hero where
They'd trudged in mud through the war.
That Repat. job was a fill-in job
And I left, still young and hale,
But I never forgot the Grasscutter
Or the man from Passchendaele.
David Lewis Paget
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 5:39 AM UTC
my dear Cosette,
why did you fall?
why didn’t you pick
yourself back up?
I saw you
on the battle lines
red shemagh
tied about your neck
I saw the bayonet
pierce your
breast
to match your
red
your man’s
clothes
why do we
disguise ourselves,
Cosette?
why don’t women
make history?
why can’t a woman
take a bullet?
my dear Cosette,
we fall
on words
on chisels
on the battle lines
sometimes we don’t
get back up
sometimes we die
before we are dead
my dear Cosette,
I watched you
bleed
I heard you
scream blue
******
you were my sister
and I was the sculptor
to capture
the peace of death
on your face
my dear Cosette,
I watched you die
now rise
to the battle lines
rise
with your head high
let me resurrect you
with my hands
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 4:26 PM UTC
Laughter & glitter
Sunshining through straight white teeth – voice unheard of
With a smile to make any man slither over
Cutting soft stomachs open
Driving out with sticks and leaves and rocks
And leaving me with the tab
How like them to err for the sake of error
Terrible and true
Acuity bound
It’s feeding time at the zoo &
There’s no one to take this noose off around my neck
We were swimming in the gulf when she asked
Why create when there’s so much to destroy?
My hands their play things too
Toys ordained from disdain sustained
By tight men in tight suits
Watching us from Ivory Towers
What a relief
& the power trips of the circus beneath them
Reaching out with viral irony I scream
Out to the heavens heaven doesn’t take collect calls
& here she is connecting souls to mates
Correcting hate and abating disgrace worldwide
Webs intangible but thought to be hooked
To the hearts that spun them
Free flowing love & peace to cut my noose hung from
The sycamore tree
As for me what more could please
Disease eradicated
People educated
Our lives illustrated not by blood off a bayonet
But by regret eliminated
Fat cats in high homes with low self esteem would seem
Just as happy to see her redacted from the text books
Crooked lies straightened & the sad thing is they
Trick us fine serfs to mitigate others in their organized ignorance
Leaving us in the dark to elbow for clues
Groping the dust blind &
Hurting ourselves with ***** fingernails scratching
She shouts like a car crash &
Everyone’s at the scene drawn to attention
By flashing red & blue
Cashing their moral chips for a peepshow
Their smiles use less muscles than frowns but take twice the effort
Affecting deflections of accusations
People listen & how couldn’t they?
Her words lifting chins like a rope over a branch
But this time the tree’s on fire
The Tower’s burning & she’s cutting all the safety nets
Like she cut the rope off around my neck
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 1:28 AM UTC
*Combat....
though morbid in nature, there is a sense of beauty....
for example -
the bullet and it's chamber
the slickness of steel, and the power of the trigger
which together correlates the symphony of motion
from the time the trigger is pulled, to the
daunting escape of a bullet, and then finally to the *********** of it's victim.....
Quite morbid... yet hauntingly beautiful.....
Then come's the bullets quintessential cohorts
The Chemical and The Armored Car (a Tank)
The brutal barrage of steel cartage
crashing into unstable masonry
then the soothing smog of golden mustard gas...
The echoed shrieks, the violent shakes,
the ****** eyes and mucus filled noses
whose violent episodes finally conclude
when the eyes of death stare back at them...
Quite morbid.... yet hauntingly beautiful....
The finally... how can we forget the noble foot soldier?
his footsteps, silent to the earth....
out of the hysteria and chaos
two men, two weapons, and a whirlwind of emotion
nationalistic pride, paranoid fear, and scattered tranquility...
A sign, as is to say....
"I don't want to fight, but I have to..."
Which all correlates in the ****** of the bayonet
a twinkle of blood, and then finally the gentle weeps...
Quite morbid.... yet hauntingly beautiful....*
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 9:36 PM UTC
In Silence
The English ex SAS Special Forces member went to the Ukraine to fight. He travelled light and took just a small back pack and a head full of skills. A gun was a gun and a bayonet a bayonet. He was trained to use most things as weapon especially military articles.
He decided to go to the Ukraine after the Russians invaded proper in early 2022. The Ukrainian Army took him to a holding facility where they vetted him. This took three days. Included was basic close combat skills and weapons use.
He excelled and was given a job, being sent to a forward artillery position with a dozen other foreign troops to protect it. The SAS man was in charge and most men and the single girl spoke English. All understood military commands and signals. All were veterans from either conscript or professional armies.
Each was here for their own reasons and all disliked either what Russia had done or Russians themselves. The English SAS member had killed several Muslim terrorists from Daesh and al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he looked forward to fighting and killing some Russians, officers if possible. After being in the Ukraine six days he was on the front line leading his first patrol. This was better than being a bouncer in a Manchester night club!
The SAS guy ordered his men to only use bayonets as they silently crept to a Russian fox hole a mile away. He wanted blood and the rush of combat, of killing. There was the trench and a single sentry, asleep. He would knife him himself. Then his squad would ****** the rest and take back any weapons, maps or documents. He spoke four languages including Russian. Any Intel was good for his bosses though. Here we go! There’s the sleeping sentry. Gently now, he must die in silence…
Mar 20, 2022
Mar 20, 2022 at 5:33 PM UTC
What is the point in
Poignancy?
*Fragment,
you tell me.
Another one in paragraph three.*
What do words matter?
I have spelled love with Lilacs instead of an “L”
I have drawn the curve of my “O” with the chill of a
Sweeping breeze.
A “V” can only appear as the violet of a
sparkling sky, or I will be unable to read it,
and every “E” will amount to nothing more than
emptiness if the voice it has been given
does not epitomize song.
*Comma-splice,
Replace it with a semicolon.*
I am trying live freely.
I want to breathe in color,
to inhale an orange Savannah sky
And exhale green which
shows through the translucent dew
of grass.
*Unnecessary use of description.
Limit it, Lidiah. Limit it.*
My fingers itch with the ferocity of
A vengeful army.
They are waiting to trample pages with
The lead of my pencil, the bayonet
of a Revolutionary-War-era rifle.
The word limit sounds like tragedy.
A single word that can somehow act as
a precursor,
To the death of passion.
Your words have put you in a box.
People always say
“Actions speak louder than words.”
In a way that is true.
But I also know it to be
a tremendous piece of fiction.
*Lidiah,
Please watch your run-ons.*
Why can our words and our actions
not be the same thing?
Isn’t the act of speaking,
the act of raising your voice,
the act of being heard,
isn’t that an action?
*Lidiah,
how many times do I have to remind you?
Clarification throughout.*
Why have we decided that our words
Mean nothing more than
stepping stones on the road to action?
When did we decide that our voices
which rise like clarion calls,
forever instilling our promises,
are to be left on silent?
Precious jewels set into rings.
Poison in a water tank.
*Lidiah,
what you say is irrelevant
if your MLA bibliography isn’t in
alphabetical order.*
Our words are our actions.
They mean the same.
Words are the distinctions of our beliefs
Illustrations of our personas
They are not mosquitos to be slapped away
and forgotten.
*Lidiah,
paragraph five is too long.
Stop rambling.
Be concise.*
Please tell me,
what is the point of being concise?
*Lidiah,
stop rambling.*
Why do we let justification
equate to useless rambling?
*Lidiah,
you have to detach yourself from the narrative.*
Feelings mean more
than a couple of sentences.
More than a good or a bad.
A mad or a sad.
Comma-splice
What about ferocity?
Never end with a preposition.
What about passion?
Replace this with a conjunctive adverb.
What about the discernable strife
that follows even indifference?
What about that?
*Lidiah,
what is the point of
Poignancy?*
What are we without it?
What does the human soul matter
if we have forsaken the parts of ourselves that
remind us of what a soul is for?
*Lidiah,
you will never be heard
if you do not learn to follow the rules*.
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 1:04 AM UTC
1511
My country need not change her gown,
Her triple suit as sweet
As when ’twas cut at Lexington,
And first pronounced “a fit.”
Great Britain disapproves, “the stars”;
Disparagement discreet,—
There’s something in their attitude
That taunts her bayonet.
2.4k
Carrickfergus (1937) - poem by Louis Macneice.
I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams;
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams
The little boats beneath the Norman castle,
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;
The Scotch quarter was a line of residential houses
But the Irish quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.
The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,
The yarn mill called it's funeral cry at noon;
Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor
Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.
The Norman walled this town against the country
To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave
And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting
The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave.
I was the rectors son, born to the Anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.
The war came and a huge camp of soldiers
Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long
Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice
And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long;
A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge
Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront;
Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed **** Robin?'
The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front.
The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England-
Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train;
I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar
be always rationed and that never again
Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags
And my governess not make bandages from moss
And people not have maps above the fireplace
With flags on pins moving across and across-
Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles,
Flares across the night,
Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans,
A cage across their sight.
I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons
Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines
And the soldiers with their guns.
Louis Macneice
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 8:54 AM UTC
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
2.3k
"Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords,
resigned to **** and to die." – Jorge Louis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
stoic labyrinthine sparrow-bone;
there is a slalom down your gullet,
bayonet curled around your neck,
you have a beak, you are lusty-smooth,
have rubble for skin, an emaciated infinity:
everything is fractal so eat your words
they are you are your rusty toenails
every footstep is a holocaust there’s
genocide under your neurons,
watch them flex and shiver.
you have soft plastic lips,
there is a vacuum in your gullet,
a box cutter carving
through your adam’s apple:
epileptics are just indecisive,
when they seize hold their tongues
they are their words you are a god
are oppenheimer and shiva,
pick favorites it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter
flex and shimmer we are just neurons
flatlines are not ghoulish nooses,
paraplegics are just cowards,
move with conviction each step
is a genocide, you have wooden
teeth and woolen wings,
thrashes are a velveteen sunset
an edible fog, your stomach
is a stomach do not eat the fog
just know that someday it will **** you
softly and swiftly.
it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter:
infinity is not recursive
alive is not our default state
once is the only route
blood makes the blade holy
if you cut me i will bleed,
i won't blame you just know
you were only ever
that very moment.
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 1:17 AM UTC
*step this side..
no, you.. that side!
in a line, in a line.. quiet now – get ready for fire.. no miss!
please line up the children in neat rows, get them ready…………………..*
1.
eyes are misted over – something happened in the gap
hooking-up strangely with estranged sons lost in custodial-wrangles
alienated values;
family-core defunct like a super-shiny apple with putrescent-flesh
long-beard wants a son after so many daughters, sits unwashed in the smoke
gender-penalty – sorry, sister.. you chose the wrong straw
you remain in that cage till we say come out
2.
bread-basket filled with stealth-grenades
rights and benefits squirm in slick-oil of rules
peasant skirting the limits of the city; even rats fare better
cloak of goat-skin, the shield hides serpents beneath
the hunter will aim for the head, land in the centre..
yet an inch or two too high
sentry, close the gates and bar the window-frames!
3.
inadvertent greed and control; aggressive power
news-man dies for feed that’s untrue, anyway
picture-man twists an image to suit the viewer
all kinds of lines disappear so quick – ****** jokes, theatre, life, even poems
and if you’ve never had the sad combo of sick and homeless,
famished and cold,
tired with sores
oh, war will be courteous enough to bring you all these, on a platter
and more..
*there is no border when we all roam in hunger and in fear
like the orphans in crowded-camps
high-rankers sit far away.. ominously "well-off"
chew on hard-cheese
gulp down red wine
but the throat still feels parched, and that bayonet is too short
its fear will kick in.. on a day least anticipated
would you be shocked if it is a child who will drive that wedge-stick home?*
st – 14 march 2014
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
The mist hung heavy in the air
Touching lightly on marsh grasses
It was almost like a London fog
And as thick as cold molasses
Beneath the mist in hiding
Decomposing in the night
Were the results of one more battle
Awaiting dawns early light
The Union and The Rebels
Fighting for what they believe
And soon, these victims kin folk
Will learn their fate and will then grieve
Cannon, gun and bayonet
Were the weapons for the ****
You couldn't see the bodies
Through the mist from on the hill
Amongst the dead one soldier
Died from a shot that came behind
His head was gaping open
He was shot by his own kind
The armies both died facing
The direction of attack
Except for this one soldier
Who was taken from the back
A coward's lot is hellfire
And so it will be for Will May
He was shot by his own brother
As he turned and ran away
The mist hung heavy in the air
Touching lightly on marsh grasses
It was almost like a London fog
And as thick as cold molasses
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 4:25 PM UTC
*A pack of cigarettes, some gum,
some condoms, and $50 were stuffed
into his cargo pocket, in his left hand
a 9 millimeter, 10 rounds in the clip
he spotted a dead Vietcong.....
Yellow and scrawny....
a bullet through his right eye
his brains seeping out of his skull....
A little girl, walking down the dirt field road
a rice bowl in her right hand,
a bayonet in the left, it was covered in blood
Up the road, he spotted a fire,
the sounds of AK-47's whipping through the wind
a pile of bodies stuffed on top of each other
Ears and fingers wrapped around bare skinned necks
the smell of rotten flesh....
To the south, a **********
high heel boots, lace *******
and a mini skirt, unkempt hair, pitch-black
red lipstick and hazel colored eyes
$50 for a ******* $75 for a *******
$100 for one hours and $200 for two
condoms still stuffed in the cargo pocket
A back alley, a sloppy *******
the ****** broke.....
The gum is still wrapped in foil,
unwrapped, slowly chewed, sweet then bitter
the roar of helicopters and the blast of grenades
American flags ripped and set on fire
A single bullet, a silent gasp.....*
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 2:52 PM UTC
The power of the “Bonnie Prince”
had broke and fled away.
William, Duke of Cumberland,
at Culloden field held sway.
His juniors came and asked the Duke
about the wounded men.
A playing card he then held up
on which two words were written”
“NO Quarter” said the playing card
thus was the order given.
They wasted not one bullet for
a wounded, dying man.
By sword, by knife, by bayonet
The English played their hand.
Charles Edward Stuart fled the field
when, clearly, all was lost.
(He never had a kingdom
but at least he had a horse.)
He fled up to the Hebrides
where , despite a huge reward,
No Scottish Laird betrayed the man
who was their Sovereign Lord.
The butcher of Culloden
made the Scottish Highlands pay:
Women ***** crops destroyed,
the livestock borne away.
He never caught his cousin Charles
though he came close at Skye:
The bonnie prince, dressed as a maid,
sailed by him on the sly.
The Jacobites were finished men
and nevermore would rise.
Their cause died on Culloden field
back there in Forty Five’
For over two centuries Scotland has been held against her will as part of the United Kingdom, but she soon may regain her freedom and self Government.
Feb 2, 2012
Feb 2, 2012 at 9:14 PM UTC