Remembrance Day

This is a poem I wrote many years ago. Thought I'd drag it out for Remembrance Day.

We think war is justifiable. A sad but necessary fact of life.

No - it isn't. We just think it is because we are too proud and stubborn to think there could be a better way.

I refuse to have anything to do with Remembrance Day. Not because I don't feel for the millions of lives lost in the senseless carnage, or am unthankful for the the society I live in.. But simply because it is a failure of mammoth proportions - a failure to be human. We don't need to remember war. We learn nothing from it. We are happy to keep initiating more. Patriotism is division. It works against all that we desperately need to embrace for a better world.


And what of our future;
Glories of war, past and present,
Lies and myths float on the phosphorous clouds
Inhaled by Red, Yellow, Black...
We have fought with patriotic eyes,
As have they!
Who can see death without tears?
How many knew the reasons?
Innocent, ignorant, martyrs.

A dawn's early mist drifts and carries fatigue,
Echoes of shellfire -
Scarred earth -
A child's terror,
Nightmare vision and Godless chills
And prickling hackles
Making beds for propaganda - patronising, patriots,
Fanatics.

At the setting of the sun
And in the morning
We will grieve them, Lest we remember.