Pathetic And Damp

-Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion, or power,

-

except War.

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.

The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are not to this generation,

This is in no sense consolatory.

-

They may be to the next.

All the poet can do today is to warn.

That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

If I thought the letter of this book would last,

- Adam Lowe (1985-p.)

We kiss in front of your monument,

our lips pressed like this, the ovals

of our mouths bunched into fists.

-

We hold tight with soft arms,

and tango in rows, our bodies

all faces and hooked elbows.

-

We kiss outside parliament

to show you we’re here. We kiss

- Warsan Shire (1988-p.)

My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair

a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole

the neighbour’s husband, burnt his name into her skin.

For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh.

It’s 4am and she winks at me, bending over the sink,

her small breasts bruised from sucking.

She smiles, pops her gum before saying

boys are haram, don’t ever forget that.

Some nights I hear her in her room screaming.

We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out.

Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.

- Warsan Shire (1988-p.)

Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign

Or are you foreign to everything you love?

We’re all animals and the body wants what it wants,

I know. The blonde said Come in, take off

your coat and what do you want to drink?

Love is not haram but after years of fucking

women who cannot pronounce your name,

you find yourself in the foreign food aisle,

pressing your face into the ground, praying

- Warsan Shire (1988-p.)

(For Saaid Shire)

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.

He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life,

that’s how we bring Dad back.

I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.

We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear,

your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums.

I can make us loved, just say the word.

Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,

I can write the poem and make it disappear.

Step Dad spits liquor back into glass,

Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,

maybe she keeps the baby.

Maybe we’re okay kid?

I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,

you won’t be able to see beyond it.

You won’t be able to see beyond it,

I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love.

Maybe we’re okay kid,

maybe she keeps the baby.

Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,

Step Dad spits liquor back into glass.

I can write the poem and make it disappear,

give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,

I can make us loved, just say the word.

Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums

we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear.

I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole,

that’s how we bring Dad back.

He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life.

- Orignal by me :)

Tear me apart limb from limb

Build tools from my carcass

And destroy the fleshy remains—

Whittle yourself an instrument,

Lull to sleep the other faces

Which tear and drag and chew,

Mashed remains of the day,

Horror stories.

Too raw to tell the lie

From the truths on either side;

You land in the middle

Of the silence and of the blood

Clotting and warping and crying

To rise from the shards

Of minds mangled to serve—

—What purpose do you seek?

You don’t know; it doesn’t matter

Regardless, you will find it alone,

Kicking and dragging and screaming

still singing:

You can use me,

- Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Poor sheepish plaything,

organized with prodigal animosity,

lived in just a year —

my Father’s cottage at Beverly Farms

was on the market the month he died.

Empty, open, intimate,

its town-house furniture

had an on tiptoe air

of waiting for the mover

on thé heels of the undertaker.

Ready, afraid

of living alone till eighty,

Mother mooned in a window,

as if she had stayed on a train

- original by me :)

The warmth of your presence

Of your arm, leg, head against mine

Hand in hand, tucked in tight-

The silver of him glitters,

My gold is dull and metallic.

You remind me of a magpie

Like this. In your black clothes.

I know the rhyme; I remember.

If we stay here long enough

I wonder if I will become you?

I’ll burn alive to keep you warm

You’ll peel the rust away with a smile;

Make treasure of the washed out,

- Jane Weir (1963-p.)

Three days before Armistice Sunday

and poppies had already been placed

on individual war graves. Before you left,

I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,

spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade

of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

*

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,

I rounded up as many white cat hairs

as I could, smoothed down your shirt’s

upturned collar, steeled the softening

of my face. I wanted to graze my nose

across the tip of your nose, play at

being Eskimos like we did when

you were little. I resisted the impulse

to run my fingers through the gelled

blackthorns of your hair. All my words

flattened, rolled, turned into felt,

*

slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked

with you, to the front door, threw

it open, the world overflowing

like a treasure chest. A split second

and you were away, intoxicated.

After you’d gone I went into your bedroom,

released a song bird from its cage.

Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,

and this is where it has led me,

skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy

making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without

a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.

*

On reaching the top of the hill I traced

the inscriptions on the war memorial,

leaned against it like a wishbone.

The dove pulled freely against the sky,

an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear

- Dame Carol Ann Duffy (1955-p.)

I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on

with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding

each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.

Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

~

I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur

in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows

the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance

like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close

with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.

~

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?

I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square

til I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,

with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

~

Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass,

stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere

in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts