DEATH OF GOD DEATH OF MAN
Blood mottled mud, clinging to life on boots and spats,
Clinging, grasping, delaying the inevitability of deathly union
Bronzed blood speckled acrid water filled Trenches,
Oblivion everywhere, Hades awaits our souls,
Pungent, stinking smell of rotten flesh,
Rats devouring torn jagged limbs.Tommy’s
Eyeball, staring, floating, in ever decreasing circles of
Blood speckled acrid water, all around the bloody dead,
The bloody dying,
Blood running down the trench into oblivion,
Into Hades,
Hades on earth,
God is dead, God died at theSomme.
Man is dead, man died at theSomme.
Gillickey © 2012
THE LAST NAMES
Remember their faces
Remember the places
Battles won, battles lost
Glorious victories, at what cost?
Whump, Whump, bullets fly
Whump, Whump, comrades die
Foe and ally heroes all.
English, German bloodied fall
Tin medals, tin limbs,
Generals ignorant of their sins
Fight on fight on, was their the cry
For God and country, you must die.
Our buddies and comrades are all gone
Only we were left to sing their song
Laments of pain, grief and shame
We will never forget their faces, their names
Now time has taken us too
Nobody left to remember you
Easily forgotten, promises made
Easily forgotten, comrades graves.
Gillickey © 2012
DEATH OF COMPASSION
Warn blood oozing, life slowly ebbing into oblivion,
Bitte, bitte, the call,
Monotonous pleading, bitte, bitte,
Like the gun that struck him down, Rat a tat, rat a tat,
Compassion gone, who cares?
He’s not my father, my brother, my son,
Silence falls; he’s gone, silence broken once more.
Muther, muther, bitte muther
Kommen hier muther,
Agony and death in the darkness,
Sporadic flaring light breaking the darkness
Illuminating the night,
Illuminating our remorse, our guilt, our regrets
He is my father, my brother, my son,
