War and Terror

She provoked him.
She said she was leaving him.
She’s been looking at other guys.

He had to show her.
She had to know
She isn’t a person in her own right,
She’s part of him.

She is the buffer between him and a hostile world.

A guest poem from Spoaken Word Lewes regular open mic'er Fred The Ninja. Thanks Fred.

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I owe my very existence to Russian fucking tanks.

If my dad had not run from them 66 years ago in Hungary, he never would have come here, never would have met my mum.

Even though I never faced them myself the bloody trail of their tracks is imprinted on my life.

Artillery rounds
and a barrage of shellfire
It looks and it sounds
like extending an empire

Bombing and shooting
civilians slain
Expansionist Putin
invading Ukraine

Threatening nukes
and rain hell from the skies
Dismissing rebukes
with chauvinist lies

Conscripts uprooting
and sent in to 'train'
Murderous Putin -
get out of Ukraine!

Her cover drive and how she ran
are now haram
under the rule of the Taliban

Can she stay in? For sure she can
She can't be out without a man
in ancient, new Afghanistan

She'd tackle assumptions and she'd score
but won't be playing any more
She's fallen foul of holy law

- a golden shovel after 'Scarlet Ribbons', for Cush

At the peal of the bell, they don’t tell you there’s
a field that not everyone comes back from. The survivor’s been
fearing that he’ll never stop hearing the gunfire
even when the bunfight has stopped. And there’s
a sight you don’t come back from. He’s been
seeing his mate in pieces and only the drinking
At the peal of the bell, they don’t tell you there’s
a field that not everyone comes back from. The survivor’s been
fearing that he’ll never stop hearing the gunfire
even when the bunfight has stopped. And there’s
a sight you don’t come back from. He’s been
seeing his mate in pieces and only the drinking

They never talked about the war,

the ones who fought and struggled through it

Why speak of memories so sore?

They never talked about the war

but football, politics and more

Unless the young asked them to do it,

they never talked about the war,

the ones who fought and struggled through it

She didn’t say the war was won

Instead she said the war was ended

Fall silent now, the bomb and gun

She didn’t say the war was won

There’s future-building to be done

Place and people to be mended

She didn’t say the war was won

Instead she said the war was ended

I spoke with my dad (pictured) about his memories of the 1945 general election ...

75 years ago when I was seven, I experienced the first of 22 general elections in my life.