Saboteurs (Repost)

Eye to Eye With Their Ally

Saboteurs

In the milky light of the bleak dawn
Agents and saboteurs awake
Preparing to assassinate
Some dark lieutenant
Of the occupying power

They will not be acclaimed
They will not even be named
They will remain
Unknown, a footnote
They dislocate our fate

We wait. Where are they now?
Missing, presumed dead,
He said. Martyred
Wanton devastation
The butchery of me.

They took lessons
In the art of destruction
Sabotage is a craft
They were taught
How to kill
With their bare hands

A veil was drawn
Over their future
They did not know
What their mission was
Until the final moment

When they were despatched
By air and by sea
Smuggled in by gunboat
And parachute
Eye to eye with their ally,
With their enemy
Upstart amateurs
Armed only with cyanide
Inside a suicide pill.

Dedicated to member of SOE
(see soon to be established on Drowning In Academia)

There You Go…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035732513@N01/albums/72157607598439650

Cocooned

Conflagration

Second Literary Recommendation of the Year:

First Literary Recommendation of the Year

Denunciation

A final, burning denunciation
Immense wisdom versus
A militant and muscular resistance
A song ascends the valley wall
Singing of afternoons spent in seclusion
In the chapel garden. In the morning
And in the evening phantom gypsies cry
Sending sorrowful messages
Into a smoke-choked sky
This is a war without end

And the unformed ones they speak,
They write correctly
Everything is standardised
Until the sudden, shocking
Rush of blood. Negotiations falter
The radio crackles and beeps
And the girl won’t stop screaming
Long haired and mired in mud
The soldiers stand idly by
And casually they watch her die

This is the natural order
And these are the facts

Off To Sea

Courtship is a chore for you
You do not care for the chase
Why are you still unmarried, they say
It does not occur to them
That you prefer it that way

For you are so strikingly handsome
But this is your narrative
This is your history
You declare you are off to sea
You are to join the merchant navy

And you determine that it will be
A momentous voyage of discovery
And your future is sacrificed
To this single objective
You are enslaved to wanderlust

And although romance does not appeal
You are pursued by the harlot, the strumpet,
The shrew. Willingly devoid of a sweetheart
You poke at the embers of a dying fire
And, even in sleep they torment you

Those silent shadows stalk you
From sunup to sundown
Will they ever leave you be?
And, at the moment of your departure
They step silently out of the frame

A smiling sailor sends pictures home
The rigging forms a membrane
And the fierce sea shelters you
And at each hiss, at each roar
Your spirit swells, your spirit soars

The ragged rocks of nightmare
Only serve to strengthen your resolve
For you have comrades now
And together you thrive, you strive
To keep the chaos at bay

Blood Red Years

Blood Red Years

The blood red years
Contained losses many time larger than me
I backtrack as a balloon floats into the sky
And pops against the surface of the sun
And believe please only this

That angel’s wings sprouted from my shoulders
For that is what they are for. Isn’t it?
Isn’t it? I lie alone like a stone in the middle of the road
I shake the hand of life. You liar, you thief!
As grey as my eyes, as grey as the sky.

A bird’s eye view for those of you who die before dawn
Embracing cardiac arrests. Will you find me alive in the morning?
A promised land is snatched away. Illusory?
Oh, yes, most certainly. It is. It always was.
And it always will be.

Amidst the Debris

In the cellar of some bombed out building, we wait
Detached only half willingly from the wider world
Amidst a snowstorm of desiccated icing where once
There was an underground eatery. We sit passively
Waiting for rescue. Still and silent as fossils
On proud display in an abandoned museum
And the fixed grin and the suppressed hysteria
Of the Air Raid Warden silences me, eradicates me
We are entombed, it would seem, and these stone walls
Unyielding. The end is approaching, we know that now

We have grown accustomed to the dark
And the one we call Mother Midnight sings us to sleep
She touches us, she caresses us, she clasps our hands
She is leading us to another land, to a place devoid
Of land mines, of bombs, of air raid shelters
There is something wondrous about this woman
She shimmers in the blackness. ‘No one will come now’
She says and wrenches our spirits from our earthly bodies
And leads us through the crevices in the stone
Up through the coal-choked air and up into a clear sky