Tag Archives: war

RETURN

RETURN

just returned
from the war

came back
scarred, horrified,
from killing people

all shapes
ages, sizes, many,
many

everyone of them
just like you

spiritually, emotionally,
psychologically

ticking all the boxes
in terms of
shared humanity
things
in common

yet
   in physical appearance
so crucially different

as per those small things
which
    really  really really matter
above everything,

nothing like you
or me
at all

ISFAHAN

ISFAHAN

“The world always decides”
      Kingdom of Heaven (dir:
       Ridley Scott)

It is hard
to see
the past
           through
all the
      smoke, mustard and
nerve gas

death mirrored from
mirror to
    mirror

same old
lies and deceit
again and again

unless a door opens
and then another
rooms nested
within rooms, infinite regression
a theme in boxes
and dolls

but with you, Tabanda,
a door opened

and looking back
now I am at last able
to reconnect,
reconstruct through
all the disinformation
and outright lies

what was it Rumi, Omar
Khatami wrote
about beauty?
Surely, Tabanda when
they wrote their lines
they had you in mind.

The Sin
   of Empire

born into a fading self-
important brutal Empire
close to camps and
fortresses founded
by Rome
         (taught us
everything)

forgive me
   for my ignorance
not realizing how deep
these assumptions
of superiority really go

how it is here
in the semantics, structured
in the very syntax

and you sitting in the classroom
smiling imbibing my
attempts to
     teach  instil my
mother tongue

so what if I told you
I have never travelled
to Isfahan
    your lately bombed,
beautiful city

city whose name
is such a pleasure
for the mouth to speak

****

I am disappearing
off radar

see stars floating
across the sky

and my memory if you
my so-called impossibly demanding
jaw-droppingly beautiful
student from Isfahan

everything here
you can translate into Farsi

Persian time
cannot be said to be
a short system of time

I think of your war
your million dead
        not a statistic, each
a remembered martyr

the Libra medallion about
your neck
   glinting for a moment
in the hard
English sunshine

in the Fitzgerald translation
(his own reworking)

Sultan’s turret
caught in a noose of light

PRAY CONTINUE

PRAY CONTINUE

I am badly wounded
haemorrhaging everything

waiting for
your coup de grâce

drenched in blood
surrounded by
scraps and
pieces of what was
once humanity

bits of bone
embedded in the
brain-spattered altar
in this place of shelter

I am not quite dead yet
so pray continue

lest
I bear witness

still a mathematical possibility
I might survive

FOOL YOURSELF

FOOL YOURSELF

don’t fool yourself
you are

not worth anything
not according to
this system
of reckoning

able to be given meaning
taken into
consideration
except perhaps
as casualty, as fatality,
statistic to be loaded into
collateral damage battle
assessment to
figure out the balance
of power
how our beautiful law
of attrition is
shaping up,
       working out

how your slaughter night
be the absolute difference
between defeat
and victory

and
with victory
absolute vindication,
proof that we are fighting
on the side of God

MOON

MOON

only a spring recoil away
from evil in motion

truly malign action
genocidal event

for which
     technology off
on a whim serving as the
great multiplier

distance from the blood
that sticky sweet to
the touch
      never gets washed off

but what
the eye does not see

the heart can Enola Gay over
stay fuzzy, misdirected

as from over the hill
over the horizon

they send the first strike
that removes all the worry
of retaliation

and there it is
engine of war, motor
of history

carting us off over
a shameful moon

CEMETERY ROAD

CEMETERY ROAD

cemetery road
ultimate
cul-de-
sac

for here
ages of souls
slumber
sleep

sounds of war in the distance
not too
far in
the distance

no one not
in that cemetery
can recall the
days the Nazis
brought their blitz
to Manchester
now under
the flag of St George
fascists of new kind
are fighting their way
into the city
Oxford Road and
all those universities
turned
I fear
into our British Stalingrad

oh, these ghosts,
do they see, sense
any of this
are they disturbed

on which side would
they fight
for which cause
would they fall

imagine themselves
dying once, twice,
thrice
many, many
times

since already dead
and my great war grandfather
what
would he
make of this

thing surely
beyond his comprehension

so
beyond yours
beyond mine
beyond all of
us

comrades, enemies
too divided here, now

to
share this poem
begin to talk

DEVICE

DEVICE

it’s good that politicians
measure blood exactly

know to the recurring decimal
how much blood
resides in
an eye
      when
exchanged for another eye

or a liver, spleen
or a brain

or a fat ton of innards
ripped out of the belly
they were
always in by
lethal fragmentation
               weapon

or anti-personnel
explosive device

the weapons market considers
rather nice