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I was recently part of a project called Poem's by Post (through It's Not Your Birthday But...) that asked poets to respond to the life stories of residents at Royal Star & Garter nursing homes. These are homes for the ex-Service community, people with fascinating stories to tell. People who had been submariners, POWs in Stalags in Germany, flown in bombers over burning German cities. All with incredible histories. The project was an interesting way to keep the stories alive, reconnect with our own collective history. It was all organised by the poet Tom Mallander, a poet who wants 'to put on historical record information, before it slips out of historical memory.' Please look him up. He has a unique approach to poetry.
I have two poems in the book. Here are the ones that didn't make the cut.
Stalag dreams of blessed guests, tobacco rations smiling.
Leaking the logbook of guard movements, the Commandant’s
cursive in the margins. Stalag dreams of quiet bunks & Khaki
barbwire ribbons. Deceitful horses conceal currencies of dirt.
The forest hugs; Stalag dreams those early morning epics.
Tracking back towards the fence, listening for the worry of a tunneller,
she turns an ear to the east. Fury is forming. All sport will conclude.
Stalag dreams of digging worms beneath her, larks tunnelling home.
George flipped, whipped his theatre seat, died in Polish sand.
An interruption……………….the goons…………..30 minutes notice.
………dogs…..whiteout…………..…boxcar vomit……excrement….
………………………….Moosburg………………………………………..
………………………………………………Slit trench rest………………
All Stalag’s dreams are hollow now… quietly filling voids…………
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Living, despite the inky evenings, is surely the shrewder
choice (granted, death is a lamb, keeps all the simple sins close),
but to continue - despite the bony knuckles of employment & ego
endlessly pressing until your numb grin slips (yrself propped
up by gin and family patience) - that's the sunset stuff,
the gunship centre of yrself, the accurizing drift towards
a settled carriage, bounded by the results of your
momentum (settled in yr whiskey slippers), memories collecting
at your feet – trout tail curls in your box of photographs.
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“The people we should have been seen dead
with,” she said
the antifa
the headshrinker
VISA granting diplomats
funders of relief & rehabilitation
former PMs and ex-friends of Hitler himself
Heroes of the Holocaust
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Listen to w o r d s
do not understand
anything
from the
White Horse Valley
mucus field t r i b e
Saxon photo
E x c e. E. d
rural riverssss
do not speak
simple statement
like foreign r a d i o
in the empty speaker
no speech
“…………
…………..”
carry out
synaptic mud
