POPPICIDE
When Butcher Haig sent them
over the top,
that throbbing meat,
cold steel against machine-gun heat,
sandwiched between earth and sky
to rot.
Then the Earl Haig Fund
and that red blotch pinned to
the chest
like a bullet-wound target request
from World War One.
As branded cattle they appear on the TV,
each dumb beast ready
to appease
that battlefield horror with ease.
The nation grins – suicide pleases?
Wilson John Haire.
