Nightmare on Civvy Street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I was against the war in Iraq and have never been any too happy with the presence of our troops in Afghanistan. However, both are down to our politicians. Our servicemen and women are doing a fantastic job and deserve nothing less than our 100% support. (M.O.D. please note).

While I fully support anti-war demonstrations, I have nothing but respect and admiration for those front-line men and women who risk their lives daily in the name of peace. Many pay the ultimate price. Others do not receive the 100% support to which they are (surely?) entitled. The dead invariably make headline news, but what about the injured?

There are, of course, two sides to every war. Both genuinely believe they are in the right. We should not be too quick to condemn an enemy comprising many ordinary men and women who, too, risk their lives in a common cause...however much other may deplore that cause.

Whatever, politics fights a dirty war with precious little thought (if any) for those in the front line other than its own [The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prime example.]

There are various charities available to help serving and ex-serving armed services personnel. The w
former wife of one told me that her husband was ashamed to ask for help, but the stress on their marriage contributory factor in their divorce.

No one but no one should ever feel ashamed to ask for help as and when they need it; it takes courage, but that first step is, in fact, a giant leap for common sense, not to mention a slap in the face for local gossips who know f**k all.

NIGHTMARE ON CIVVY STREET

A soldier, an arm and leg in traction
(truck blown up by a mine)
reassuring us he feels fine, just fine…
while half-listening to pulp fiction;
no regrets, he says, well worth
any price he’d known he might pay
for the thrills and kills every soldier
sees but as Hobson’s choice

As the audio story starts to spread
dark mischief in his one good ear,
he leans forward as if trying to peer
into shadow lands of the dead;
war’s is mother’s milk, he explains,
to those with subtle convictions
like its paymasters and those politicians
floating victory on the wind

The audio voice ducking and diving
the whistle of a sniper’s bullet,
the blind young soldier ducks a hit;
beads of sweat, waking nightmare
without end, need help but ashamed
to ask, need to brave it out in case
anyone guesses there's a human being
behind the hero's smiley mask

Honourable discharge, fighting off tears
for all the world's nightmares

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[Note: This poem first appeared under the title 'Sweating it Out' in On the Battlefields of Love by R N Taber, Assembly Books, 2010; rev. ed. in e-format in preparation.]]

Winter On Civvy Street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Regular readers will know that I am a shameless Doris Day fan. The National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank is showing some of her movies throughout December and I have managed to catch a couple: Young Man with a Horn, based on the life of legendary Jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbeck and my favourite Doris Day film, Love Me Or Leave Me. Oh, but it has been a real pre-Christmas treat!

Meanwhile…

Today’s poem is dedicated to less fortunate people everywhere, especially emotionally damaged ex-service personnel like the subject of the poem with whom I chatted one wintry night in London  several years ago. I bought him a hot meal and a few teas at a nearby café, as he relayed a stumbling, tumbling tale of family life blown apart all but as effectively as a roadside bomb had killed his best friend while serving in Afghanistan. I toyed with the idea of inviting him to share Christmas with me, but when I returned from the café’s toilet, he had gone. I looked, but there was no sign of him amongst a flurry of snow outside.

I tried several times to write a poem about that evening, but have only just completed one of which I like to think he would approve. He would not tell me his name, but I guess he could have been any one of many people returning from fighting this war or that anywhere in the world, unable to return to anything like the way things once were.

Was he gay, people ask? Oh, and what has sexuality to do with it?  True, gay men and women fight in wars, too. (Take the Great War poet, Wilfred Owen to name but one…) As it happens, though, I didn’t ask…and why should I?

One of life’s greater ironies is that peace can be just another war…something perhaps to bear in mind during Christmas or any religious festival calling for peace in our time?

WINTER ON CIVVY STREET

Icicles, dangling from a roof

like frozen tears in a homeless soldier’s beard

house cringing from all it has seen

and heard during years it has stood on the street,

watching war wives and widows struggling

to make frayed ends meet, keep up appearances 

for wishful thinking

Icicles, starting to melt, old house

unashamedly crying for the homeless soldier

walking its street in mid-winter, no place

to call home since returning from the Front Line,

haunted by dead friends, missing comrades,

walking wounded…all terrorising a mind’s eye

with wishful thinking

Icicles, smearing honest brickwork

with what has to be the saddest graffiti nature

ever left (if briefly) on the face of a house,

whose cosy curtains come alive with firelight

and companionable shadows, testament

to a kinder Spirit of Christmas and its poetry

of wishful thinking

Icicles, gone without leaving a trace

like the homeless soldier, long since moved on

to some other blurred, nameless place

that’s, oh, so scarily similar to that Front Line,

tossing images of love, hope, and peace

into the next coffin alongside a growing rage

with wishful thinking

Copyright R. N. Taber 2013

[Note: First published in CC&D v 242, Scars Publications (U.S.) March 2013 and subsequently in The World at War, Forward Press, the same year.]