November 11th

I wrote this poem last year after watching an old soldier in a wheelchair being pushed past the Cenotaph in the Remembrance Day Service.

The poppies (watercolour and ink) are also my own work.

 The one who came home

In my dreams

I can still hear

The crack crack crack

Of the machine guns

And I fear

Waking to find

I am still there

Knee deep in the stinking muddy ooze

So I turn to the booze

And once a year

I get to be pushed

Past the Cenotaph

While the crowds cheer.

 

© Andrea Neidle, My Life in Poems