CONDITIONING

• How immediate is war history
•       history
• served with breakfast lunch and
•       dinner and always the mystery
•  of no victims
•        it is the essence of cherubim
•  embedded in the medium
•        cryogenically applied to live again
• in some pandemonium
•       don’t stay too cosy with peace
• nor too humane with the rest of the
•        world
• that touch of death increases
•       since over-the-top they were
• hurled
•       and hurled again on to that hotel
•  reception board
•       with its million white-cross keys
• each one fits a grave
•       or opens a war memorial to its
• dead hoard
•       live on myths live with death
• death
•       as your only kith

Wilson John Haire.

OUTLAW

• Torn shirt, suit buttons gone.
• In Iraq where he belongs.
• Ripped flesh, broken bones.
• And he’s all alone.
• Two shoes on swelling feet.
• And still they beat.
• Black and blue on brown skin.
• Now not alone in the body bin.
• Soaking shirt, choking collar.
• His life’s work ends in squalor.
• An office in the High Street.
• All alone, near defeat.
• The Army, the Government had its say.
• A civil rights lawyer flayed.
• From the liberals, not a peep.
• Society’s frightened  back to sleep.

Wilson John Haire.