‘Tucked in’ isn’t quite how we’d put it. We weren’t plumped up neatly in bed. If you ‘fell’ as one piece you were lucky, Not dismembered before you were dead. We wore dog-tags of vulcanised fibre But those need their ‘dog’ to stay whole Or to keep enough bone to be tied on Not be […]
WW1
from Letter for the Unknown Soldiers
I see. This is the shape remembrance takes. To get it, the scale had to be brought home. Imagine them moving in one long continuous column, four abreast … as the column’s head reaches the Cenotaph the last four men would be at Durham. In India, that column would stretch from Lahore to Delhi. Whichever […]
from War Poem
1. There is a war going on in my country. In all the years I have lived in this body, there has been no peace. My mother still has hope in her heart, she keeps a suitcase packed just in case. This whole life we have been waiting for our flight to be called. In […]
from Rising
In Mosul, Homs and eyeless Gaza kids swarm the streets of the dismembered caliphate spouting freedom and riches, styling with AKs and PSG 10, theatres of dreaming and war: the kops and graveyards of FIFA’s planet are stiff with creaming boys. This time it’s oil, not markets. This time it’s oil, not borders. This time […]