In my world, Smeagol nips Lester and April headbutts the
door, Talulah paints, the three munchkins pull in different directions
and a former newspaper journalist writes poetry like there's no tomorrow.
And I say thanks to the Pole Zbigniew Herbert who wrote: I cannot grow
up/although years go by/and planets and wars/roar above.
Perhaps I Will Never See Again
I’m walking and there are bodies
I know that man, that girl
I knew them by name, by nuance
If I could I would have saved them
But it seems fruitless today
There are so many dying
I wonder out loud are there any left?
In the square there are helicopters
Carrying relations to hospitals they have never seen
The trucks are ablaze, the children ash
By tomorrow they will be forgotten
I don’t see straight now
My heart beats when it wants
I look but I don’t want to see
Perhaps I will never see again
God Among the Bombs
They shouldn’t go over there
Dropping bombs
Killing shirt-covered uncles
Who are running for their orphans
In the dark behind the tank
A girl peels potatoes
Her dead brother buried in the afternoon
Mothers and fathers smoke at the back door
Wondering
From which direction will come the bullet
In the opening beside the square
Three men reload and scatter
Shoppers in their coloured scarves
A landmine tears open metal and flesh
Now they’re dying by the hour
Oh god, what can you do?
Oh god, do you exist?
Die for a Pay Cheque
I waited for the paragraph that would say you were dead
Delivered to my door
Written in impeccable English
With a certain magic and silence
You were gone for good
It’s been six months and to be honest
I had forgotten how you kissed
How you fucked
It should be easier now
To find another who will die
For a pay cheque and a salute
Firing Squad
In the line I stood staring
At the man who would kill me
They offered blindfolds
They offered cigarettes
They gave me nothing but a bullet
Between the eyes
I saw it coming
I felt where it went
I lay among bodies bleeding
They will not forget me
I am mentioned in dispatches
I ran from the bullet that got me in the end
