Tweet Repeat 80

The bombs interspersed the troops,
Threw them, made them loop-de-loop.
Scattered to the four winds,
Shattered like pounded flint.

Some got up in dribs'n'drabs,
Numbers cut like pounds of flab.
A patchwork with pieces missing,
No longer so neatly fitting.

Some troops moved forward and waited,
For the next rain so heavily weighted.
Ever on moved this incessant gamble,
That made some run, some only amble.

Sandbagged at dawn

Sandbagged at dawn
With bullets torn
Our blood filling the trench

Lying down on duckboards
In a reddened ford
Each mind filled with his wench

Whether young woman, man
Favourite servant or whore
Each man remembers
And reaches to his amore

And clutching nothing
But feeling something
Each man expiring fast
 
All fought for something
All have got nothing
Each man breathes his last

To be replaced with a medal
A penny, a scroll
Survived by memories
In lives left with a hole

For that there is war
Repeating what’s been before
Among what are called victories

Nations built up with tors
The dead’s bones lining the floors
Bodies forming the worm’s vittlery

As it always shall be
Whether deemed legal or not
For one side or for all
This is our history and future lot

Those were the times (war)

Those were the times that war became even more insane,
The times that made each action ever more inane:
When enemies came together in camaraderie,
When enemies showed respect for professional longevity-

We’d get on so well,
Then blow each other to hell.
We would shake hands,
Then fight for No Man’s Land.

One time we chatted while collecting our dead,
Exchanging stories of the women we had wed;
Another saw us talk of fields occupied by our brothers,
And what we would never write home to our mothers:

Ever condensing our shared experience
Within snatches of time with expediency.
Because on each side we were the same:
Pawns playing out the politician’s game.

Those times made a sham and a mockery of sacrifice,
And showed what could be done by a trap full of mice
That our leaders had quite simply failed to achieve,
Leaving the populace in the path of this grand cleave.

We would have ended it any day,
If we had just known the way;
Rather than remain stout professionals
Killing with an ever-growing arsenal-

Yes, we would have ended it any day,
Downed tools and walked swiftly away,
But for our stiff resolve and sense of duty-
Those things that made us quite, quite loony.

So that all we had were those times war laid down
And we populated the fields of mud brown
With minds full of peace,
Searching desperately for reprieve.