Two Poems

Passchendaele

When your life's f**ked up and each day is a curse,
It helps to remember, things could be worse;

When the spark of resistance fails to light,
It is a mark of persistence to stand and fight;

In the times when hope burns dim and low,
There remains one thing I will always know;

Whenever this life whacks and smacks me,
When an enemy (or so-called friend) attacks me --

One thought jerks me back, one thought without fail:
I was not sent to die ... at Passchendaele!

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Passchendaele (glorified as the Third Battle of Ypres) is the epitome of the mindless industrial slaughter of the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of men -- on both sides -- died in agony in a sea of mud under relentless driving rain. Shells and machine gun bullets accounted for most, but thousands (yes, thousands!) simply drowned in the waterlogged swamps of the battlefield. It was the closest thing to hell on earth our planet has ever seen.

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One faintly interesting feature of this poem (upon reflection) is that you can move around any of the first four couplets and it will still make sense. Sort of.

Lance Corporal

My heart fell down me trousers,
Jayz, ye lousers,
would ye never let me gang awah?

There be nowt more new to be said,
amn't I almost dead?
Will I have a drop of whiskey? I will.

Yerra, God, that's good. Simple and plain.
Halfway sane.
Tell me, lads, yer names again?

Is it Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Ho-ho, listen, never marry,
Never marry the first young lass what arsks yeh!
Wheeze.
Wheeze.
That were a joke.

I'm old, decrepit, and bollock
naked under this here blanket,
just like the Scots under their kilts.
Hee, hee, hee.
Cough, cough, spit.
Where's that bloody whiskey?

The parson went over after the battle,
large and fat and smarmy,
and used his little officer's cane
to flick over the kilts
on the bare dead buttocks,
to make it decent, like.

I had no time for him
or his old-time silly religion
lost long before. They sent us over
to fight for King and Country.
The King never did bugger all for me,
and the "Country" did fook all as well:
I coom over because I were sent.
And because of the lads, in course.

I'm a hundred and fookin seven this year,
here in this bleedin' hospital,
not thinking of heaven,
not thinking of anything much, in fact.
I'm trying to forget:
still trying to forget.
The television crews
want to put me on the news --
"Last Survivor Succumbs"
let them suck their bleedin' thumbs.
I have nothing to say.
I have nothing to say to that shower.
I have a lot I would like to say
to Bert, and Titch and Tommy G,
to Jimbo, Fishface, Tandragee,
and to that young Lieutenant what's-his-face.
All dead. Killed eighty fookin years ago
in front of my eyes. No surprise.
There is so much I want to say to them
but cannot. The words won't come.

People hover beside this bed,
waiting for me to die. Ghouls.
I have nothing more to say to them.
If I close my eyes, with luck I'll try
to elude them, to join my dead young comrades
in the overarching sky.

It's me, I'll say,
so don't be afraid.
So sorry, boys,
I were slightly delayed.