NaPM April 8 2014

[milo]

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month.

Topic 8: Today's prompt comes from AJ (cidermaid) who thinks that with the anniversary of world war 2 approaching it would be nice to write some war poems.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[ChristopherSea]

Rank and File

Chary white knights stare
across vacant squares,
spanning arenas
where battles are sought.

Bent upon one knee
before the black queen,
counterfeit bishops
unsheathe their broadswords.

The doomed bleeding pawns
will nosh regal lawns
as their kings sip high
tea pending capture.

They commence cruel games
with absence of shame,
engaged in warfare,
despite the new moon.

[Erthona]

Unknown to them,
these peach-fuzz cheeked boys
were building a wall,
one body bag per brick,
one life per engraved name.
I don’t know how many in all,
there’s still MIA’s and POW’s,
not to mention those who made it back
but went insane…

[ellajam]

Nothing Learned

During grade school fire drills we'd escape
into the fresh air, enjoying the break.
For one bomb drill we'd line the hall walls,
the youngest tossing beanbags
while the older kids whispered
in fun; for the other we'd crouch
under our desks, sneaking peeks
out the window, silently imagining
our own personal terrors.
I always wondered how I'd find
my family, wandering
a changed landscape.

Forty years later,
when our world shook and solidity
collapsed in on itself, only smoke
rose where the towers had stood, the dead
still uncounted, survivors emerging.
Unable to return home,
I drove through streets buried
under soot and computer debris,
aiming for mom and dad's.

[Keith]

Counting the cost

It’s raining on the beach,
the cattle should be lying down,
not crawling to the abattoir,
heavy hoofed before the bolt.

The rolling stock lurches,
lambs press their faces,
bleating through wooden slats,
sheep look on above them, lost.

Carcass pie crusts are
latticed over lime pits,
cooking in the chemical heat,
trains bring in another baker’s dozen.

[Erthona]

Chris,

That reminds me of I think "Peter the Great" who actually used "Boyars" as chess pieces, or something similar to chess. some kind of war game. Nice subtle touch with the "new moon", too dark top fight.
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That's nice elle, connecting the past to the future. The only thing I really remember about the fire drills (we didn't bomb drills) is being happy we were getting out of school for awhile...of course I always got in trouble for not staying in place, or standing still. I couldn't help it, I had ants in my pants!
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Wow Kieth, that's a stark and disturbing picture of what I assume is the Holocaust. Could I query why you used the French word for slaughterhouse? This is a haunting image:

"lambs press their faces,
bleating through wooden slats,
sheep look on above them, lost."

Dale

[ChristopherSea]

[quote='Erthona' pid='160251' dateline='1396993590']
Chris,

That reminds me of I think "Peter the Great" who actually used "Boyars" as chess pieces, or something similar to chess. some kind of war game. Nice subtle touch with the "new moon", too dark top fight.

Thank you Dale. Those rhymes and syllabic verse were for you!

Your piece was all too real for those that watched the play-by-play at the dinner table.

[Keith]

Chris,

That reminds me of I think "Peter the Great" who actually used "Boyars" as chess pieces, or something similar to chess. some kind of war game. Nice subtle touch with the "new moon", too dark top fight.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

That's nice elle, connecting the past to the future. The only thing I really remember about the fire drills (we didn't bomb drills) is being happy we were getting out of school for awhile...of course I always got in trouble for not staying in place, or standing still. I couldn't help it, I had ants in my pants!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow Kieth, that's a stark and disturbing picture of what I assume is the Holocaust. Could I query why you used the French word for slaughterhouse? This is a haunting image:

"lambs press their faces,
bleating through wooden slats,
sheep look on above them, lost."

Dale

S2 & S3 relate to the holocaust and yes it is rather blunt but once I had gone down that path anything lighter seemed a disservice. S1 is the Normandy landings of the allied troops hence my use of abattoir it is also a commonly used word in the uk. Thank you for the comments Dale much appreciated, Keith

[milo]

The Battle of Beast and Bird an Aesop's Fable

How did it start? Some blame it on the fox -
too many geese had suffered at his teeth -
some blame the eagle, “terror of the heath”,
who plucked the hares and dashed them on the rocks.

And so there came the war of beast and bird
and fang met feather on the blood-damp field.
But beasts who saw the bats with birds appealed,
“You’re one of us – your teeth are sharp, your belly’s furred!”

The birds countered, “But clearly you have wings,
you’re one of us come back and join the fight!”
Without a cause, the bats escaped to night.
When peacetime came with all the wealth that peacetime brings

the beasts said of the bats, “Not beast enough!”
and birds joined in, “We’ll rip their wings right off!”

[Truerenigma]

An Art

She dropped me with a judo kick -
I dove behind the couch to change
my clip. If I just rearrange
my story, maybe it will stick.
I would have done the dishes, but -
shit, out of bullets, not again.
Baby can't we just be friends?
She slapped my mouth and knocked it shut.

I'd better think of something sweet:
she has a laser guided dart;
a look that knocks me off my feet -
she's turned the glare into an art.
I really hate it, getting beat.
Why didn't I just do my part?

[milo]

An Art

She dropped me with a judo kick -
I dove behind the couch to change
my clip. If I just rearrange
my story, maybe it will stick.
I would have done the dishes, but -
shit, out of bullets, not again.
Baby can't we just be friends?
She slapped my mouth and knocked it shut.

I'd better think of something sweet:
she has a laser guided dart;
a look that knocks me off my feet -
she's turned the glare into an art.
I really hate it, getting beat.
Why didn't I just do my part?

There's the trueenigma we know and love!

[cidermaid]

This is one written from some brief history notes we have of the farm here. (not that this matters to the poem but i found them interesting so I'm adding them to the post below the poem).

War horse.
Accustomed to turning left, Olive,
14.2 pony – Exbourne muster,
tried to take her usual route
to the chapel, just as she should;
instead she was whipped on
beyond the fields of Solland.

After the train, at Portsmouth
she was belly-flopped onto the deck,
and assigned by lot. Down below,
her new family stood by, nervous,
all of them led by bullying hands
beyond the fields of England.

Ranked by the command on the reins,
she pulled small carts on numerous tasks.
No warm stall at the end of the day;
In all weathers she stood to attention
harness in place, ready for action.
In foreign fields, in the quiet of pre-dawn,
beyond the pain, she saw a Solland morn.

For four years of rain, sleet and mud scald
and shell shock, with only a token of praise
she laboured and toiled away, until one day - it stopped.
Her men marched off, but she was left
at her post as they boarded the boats
and floated beyond her field of view.

The men who came were harassed;
unharnessed and lined up, tied by a strap,
she was taken with other walking carcasses
to the muster point for the market.
One voice of hope – English, female.
Beyond the battlefield, the hammer fell.

Some WWI info taken from the “Sampford Courtenay” book
During the First World War, horses were requisitioned from the farms for service at the front. Olive a bay mare who was used by the Hawkins family as a ridding horse and to pull the trap was taken from Solland.
Her departure was recorded in John Hawkins accounts books: 10.8.1914 – “Olive pony commandeered at Exbourne. £40”
Olive when pulling the trap was accustomed to turning left at the Sampford chapel crossroads to go down to the village and the Methodist chapel. When taken away by the soldiers, presumably to Sampford Courtenay station, instead of going straight ahead she went to turn down the lane as usual and had to be whipped on. This was reported to hr owners by the neighbours living at Chapel Inn near the crossroads. The Hawkins girls cried when they heard what had happened. Olive of course, like most of the other horses requisitioned for the war, never came back.
Half a million horses used by the British army during the conflict were killed. At the end of the war, many of the surviving animals were abandoned by the armed forces and starved as a result or were auctioned off to French butchers.

---

As a second point of interest (all be it to me only perhaps) My husbands great Aunt was so stirred by the plight of the horses abandoned by the war office that she started a rescue charity. although this did not start intime to save the horses from WWI it as gone from strength to strength, remaining at the original farm near Bristol, run by the aunty and is now called Horse world.
...hence the odd referance to the female voice at the end...I know too abstract for a reader but i wanted it in there!

[ChristopherSea]

This is one written from some brief history notes we have of the farm here. (not that this matters to the poem but i found them interesting so I'm adding them to the post below the poem).

War horse.
Accustomed to turning left, Olive,
14.2 pony – Exbourne muster,
tried to take her usual route
to the chapel, just as she should;
instead she was whipped on
beyond the fields of Solland.

After the train, at Portsmouth
she was belly-flopped onto the deck,
and assigned by lot. Down below,
her new family stood by, nervous,
all of them led by bullying hands
beyond the fields of England.

Ranked by the command on the reins,
she pulled small carts on numerous tasks.
No warm stall at the end of the day;
In all weathers she stood to attention
harness in place, ready for action.
In foreign fields, in the quiet of pre-dawn,
beyond the pain, she saw a Solland morn.

For four years of rain, sleet and mud scald
and shell shock, with only a token of praise
she laboured and toiled away, until one day - it stopped.
Her men marched off, but she was left
at her post as they boarded the boats
and floated beyond her field of view.

The men who came were harassed;
unharnessed and lined up, tied by a strap,
she was taken with other walking carcasses
to the muster point for the market.
One voice of hope – English, female.
Beyond the battlefield, the hammer fell.

Some WWI info taken from the “Sampford Courtenay” book
During the First World War, horses were requisitioned from the farms for service at the front. Olive a bay mare who was used by the Hawkins family as a ridding horse and to pull the trap was taken from Solland.
Her departure was recorded in John Hawkins accounts books: 10.8.1914 – “Olive pony commandeered at Exbourne. £40”
Olive when pulling the trap was accustomed to turning left at the Sampford chapel crossroads to go down to the village and the Methodist chapel. When taken away by the soldiers, presumably to Sampford Courtenay station, instead of going straight ahead she went to turn down the lane as usual and had to be whipped on. This was reported to hr owners by the neighbours living at Chapel Inn near the crossroads. The Hawkins girls cried when they heard what had happened. Olive of course, like most of the other horses requisitioned for the war, never came back.
Half a million horses used by the British army during the conflict were killed. At the end of the war, many of the surviving animals were abandoned by the armed forces and starved as a result or were auctioned off to French butchers.

---

As a second point of interest (all be it to me only perhaps) My husbands great Aunt was so stirred by the plight of the horses abandoned by the war office that she started a rescue charity. although this did not start intime to save the horses from WWI it as gone from strength to strength, remaining at the original farm near Bristol, run by the aunty and is now called Horse world.
...hence the odd referance to the female voice at the end...I know too abstract for a reader but i wanted it in there!

AJ, this is a potent and poignant poem and my favorite of this lot. Bittersweet, as I had to fight tears this morning when I read this. Thank you for sharing the background and family history associated with the poem as well. Your great Aunt in-law was a wonderful woman./Chris

[cidermaid]

AJ, this is a potent and poignant poem and my favorite of this lot. Bittersweet, as I had to fight tears this morning when I read this. Thank you for sharing the background and family history associated with the poem as well. Your great Aunt in-law was a wonderful woman./Chris

Thanks for that Chris - i thought it was just me that is a dappy and soppy thing...I was in tears as i wrote it.

[Erthona]

AJ,

Thanks for the explanation, aside from getting that this was a horse being abused, and it was during a war, I didn't get much as I am unfamiliar with the lay of the land, so to speak, and also do not know much, to my chagrin, about WWI, except what I saw of it through my stereoscope. As they were only pictures with very brief explanation, and I had no framework in which to make sense of them, they remained interesting but senseless.

In terms of the poem, it is impossible to not feel pity for "Olive"as she is presented as a good horse who was trying her best to do what was expected of her. A shame.

Dale

[justcloudy]

I've written and rewritten this about 3 times now. Very unhappy with it but it's already the 10th so thought I should just post it.


Her veil dropped to the ground as they grabbed
and dragged her behind the baker's van
which once smell of burnt bread, but now reeks
of charred metal. It hasn't moved for months.

She had hoped to leave before the horrors reached
us with their long claws. They snuck in at night
proclaiming us free from his iron grasp...
but he had never squeezed.

Dark fingers leave red marks on her uncovered neck,
she looks at me, eyes screaming run!

[Mopkins]

War


My Nana was always quite rude to the Japs...
I wondered about it- was this just a lapse
Of good manners on my Nana’s part?
A sign of racism deep in her heart?
But as I grew older in me she confided
The memories of war which in her still resided.
The way the Japs treated her kin was a crime-
Her sore indignation not fading with time
But expressed on occasion, relived in her dreams,
The war is not over for Nana it seems.