"enfilade" poems
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
who will read aloud
my poems
when I'm gone?
that old unfriended thot,
a nagging merry query
was for awhile forgot,
put on the back of an upper shelf,
where dust motes and mites
fear to trend
thoughts,
that I thought
I had dispensed with,
letting time
build illusionary wry walls,
fooling World Trade Center tall
morose forlorn,
pensiveness of
red ant armies,
incapable of
black marker redaction,
there is always one
a lingering malingerer
a sole fado singer,
playing woeful jazz in
the Quarter
on an empty emoty street,
dressed and guised
as the soul of a solitary
cancerous cell
"survivor"
cur overlooked,
biding time,
the surgeons gone,
the drugs flushed,
radiation burning
no more
begins then
the unholy
trilogy cycle
worn out, overused...
invasive categorically relentless
maybes,
what ifs,
then
oh goddamnnotagain
because believed, on knee,
I oathed that
loathed, raven nevermore,
ought
that
cracked door would be open
yet like the
New Orleans levee aged locks
hurricane succumbed
overflowed, overcome,
keyholed, infiltrated,
falllen to the enemy,
mes enfilade,
rumps up the black flag of
surrender
brain sneers
periodically,
like every other
minute, ok,
second,
coyly asking
penny for your
worthless thoughts?
just when you believed
"no mas"
was a prayer that had been heard,
teeth kicked in,
body snatching
hordes and boors
bad boys and ******
sitting high in the
saddle again,
grinning torturous
tarty smiles
at who,
at you, fool!
you're as alone in that place
as insufficiently as that
impoverished overused
word can ere convey
the nagging realization
that when asking
no one answers
when your thinkings
perish you
your cutesy sweatshirt reads
last standing poet alive,
stabbed ded by awful-truths,
you failed and
all the black cats,
have fled the neighborhood,
just when need was greatest
who will read aloud
my poems when I'm gone,
has been silently answered
by silent applause,
the last theater goer
shuffles out, and turns
and extends his middle finger
his review leaves a
singular impression,
he looks familiar,
gauntly ghost,
he has accompanied me always
and his finger is his
triumphal parting shot
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 5:25 PM UTC
The softest touch of a loving friend
To the deepest **** from a charaded blade
Where does blissful sensation make its end;
Converting to the obtrusive pain enfilade?
A subtle ambiance from a serene musician
To the daily news of grief and causality
When do loving whispers of mutual affection;
Fade into a harsh scolding from authority?
An untasted sweetness of rare delicacy
To the sour lingering of bitter temptation
How does the favored indulgences' nuancy;
Shift to a bland routine of daily recreation?
A picturesque sight of undying fantasy accord
To the shocking reception of a suicide note
Why do relations flow from their distant discord;
Into the desperate end that fate already wrote?
The lavishing waft of a motley gardens' aroma;
To the putrid scent sifting in the house of flies
What's the difference between this mundane coma;
And the ignored certainty we all despise?
Aren't pain and bliss really just one in the same?
Like the lowest to highest on any sort of scale
Every single trace of emotion just felt by name;
Portrayed variably through each separate tale
May 20, 2013
May 20, 2013 at 7:39 PM UTC
They Did Not give Their Lives:
Their Lives Were taken From Them.
The boy soldiers formed up in line:
the Sergeant inspected each in turn.
Colonel Forde (retired)
took the salute; the cadet’s
drilled colour party moved off.
Towards the village Cross
the troop marched on,
and as the band struck
up the tune “Blaze Away”
flocks of pigeons rose
from misted fields
exploding into flight
spreading like shrapnel
to enfilade the distant trees.
Crackling gunfire
echoed in the woods
and pheasants beat
from cover plunged
to earth, killed
in fern and bracken
by weekend shooting
party’s fusillade.
On the war memorial wreathes rested
where villager’s names inscribed on stone
are listed Unforgotten. The church bell
chimed an end to silent minute. A bugle
call died away as birds sang out an anthem.
Tony Brady
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 3:51 AM UTC
You marmalade dropper, you.
You cause an enfilade with the briefest of your words, my love.
You cislunar beauty.
Let me watch you. Make me your auspex.
Stravaig through my heart.
Be your flagitious best with me.
Noctivagants, you and I.
Steal a pimpmobile. Let's run away.
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 12:36 PM UTC
This is not going to be easy.
Now she knows I'm awake.
I should record this.
Her.
Or just turn the music up.
Something I could tell her
That would blow her mind
Or her faith.
And then the cats would stay.
But how quickly I forget
Nothing ever goes away.
Why bother being good?
When bad is here to play.
How quickly I forget
Nothing ever goes away
When home becomes a hindrance
And roots reveal decay.
Turn the other cheek I speak.
But Blessings enfilade.
Well I'll go and tell
her that she wasn't just.
Because I am the loss
of a loss of all trust.
Screaming so much it
breaks down the time.
Stop trying to help
I am up every
**** time.
Want to make sure that the cats-
You must've erased it already
United is the first time
What she's ever sent me.
But how quickly I forget.
Nothing ever goes away.
Why bother with life?
When if it's here to stay-
How quickly We'll forget.
Nothing ever goes away
For Me, Ma bon vivant piquant!
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 9:42 PM UTC
Brainstorm cometh, damning frontal hemisphere
jamming lookout, noggin perched, roiling thinking
uber wayfaring zealot, drills legendary phalanx.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Writer's block afflicts Das scribe,
who **** now stricken supine
adept dull livery sub par excellence
his gold standard worse
thus, another day
to slog thru arduous process
crafting admirable verse
wrestling behemoth loosed ******
dodging enfilade broadcast sos terse.
N'er easy chore to fashion
acceptable word worth poem to whit
staring at flickering
accursed cursor doth blank stare visit
flash flooding warning saturated
gray matter fist sized unit
groundswell burgeoning leveed banks
barging signals transmit
urgent army corps of engineers
to reroute via sluice, sans surfeit
apprentice longshoreman
doth double duty
as grammarian sought to retrofit
arduous struggle ensues, where drowning
affects consummation
strong temptation quit
ditch ching progress made,
thus far in hot pursuit
mind comfortably numb
stream of consciousness
submerges concentration
entrenched deep posit
craftiness sentenced to punctuate
disequilibrium doth outwit
venerably beaded trademark
Scottish matted flair
abandoned unfinished poem
left forever stranded orbit
zero escape velocity
zinging, unsprung,
pinging mindscape nonprofit
able endeavor reflecting zeitgeist
bombarding Messerschmitt
undermining, strafing, disabling
cutting crew rescue outer limit
faint feint blinking in the twilight zone.
Jun 1, 2018
Jun 1, 2018 at 6:28 PM UTC
This is not going to be easy.
Now she knows I'm awake.
I should record this.
Her.
Or just turn the music up.
Something I could tell her
That would blow her mind
Or her faith.
And then the cats would stay.
But how quickly I forget
Nothing ever goes away.
Why bother good?
When bad is here to play.
How quickly I forget
Nothing ever goes away
When home becomes a hindrance
And roots reveal decay.
Turn the other cheek I speak.
Blessings enfilade.
Well I'll go tell her that she was just.
And I the loss of a loss of trust.
Screaming so much it reads down time.
Stop trying to help because I am the up every Read
**** time.
Want to make sure that the cats-
You must've erased it already
United is the first time
she's ever sent me.
But how quickly I forget.
Nothing ever goes away.
Why bother life?
When if it's here to stay
How quickly We'll forget.
Nothing ever goes away
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 10:05 AM UTC