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Lori Ann Day
I am writing from the USA and I have been writing since I was eighteen years
old.
I am now 42 years old, a paid singer, also working at retail. I feel it is very
important to write poetry about the war, and share how I feel. I do not
feel that people should keep quiet about what is going on. When the war
began in 2003, I was unable to sleep night after night.
I was so bothered, I kept waking up, only to get up and write what I felt about
these disturbing events. The images came out in my work.
I Used to Dream
They asked an Iraqi
civilian what he
thought of all this.
He looked the Marine
in the eye for a moment,
and said, "I thank God
I am free."
I had to wonder if he
would be just as happy
to live if his arms were blown
off like the little twelve year
old boy on the block.
Behind the eyes of this beautiful
little Iraqi boy was once innocence
and naivety.
Now, he has been forced to grow up
and endure a pain almost too unbearable
to endure for any man, let alone a child.
One day he lived with his parents,
the next day they were gone, and he was
forced to live on without even his arms.
He was just becoming a young man.
Now, he will never know what it is like
to hold his wife with his two arms.
He was told that he was a beautiful little
boy, and the translator translated back in
English for him, "I might look alright on the
outside, but I am not alright within.
I used to have dreams when I used to
think of life.
Now, they've been taken all away, and
I don't dream of my dreams anymore.
I have been liberated from my dreams."
We are making sure that others will never
be able to hold weapons of mass destruction.
Let this little boy serve as a reminder.
I thank God his mother on earth can no longer
see what happened in three weeks that took her
nine months to create.
Lori Ann Day
Jesus Fought an Iraqi
I guess that if no weapons of mass
destruction are found we'll have to say
we're sorry! Of course, we won't be able
to make up for "collateral damage" as we
put it.
Don't you think that if dead Iraqis could
speak, they'd sooner be under the Iraqi
regime than be lifeless?
Wouldn't a mother of a dead Iraqi child
sooner see her child alive than see
Democracy and be "free"?
Someday, things are going to be so turned
around that we will be hearing myths
about how Jesus fought the Iraqis, handed
them Bibles and gave them Democracy in
place of their loved ones.
I mean Democracy was based on God.
It reminds me a bit of the crusades where
the Indians were handed Christianity, and
we all know what happened to the "pagans"
we tried to convert and civilize, and what
will happen to the Iraqi's without God in
Democracy.
You know, I was told that God doesn't
enter into this, and I said, "Maybe this is
the problem."
Lori Ann Day
Before My God Does
I was but a child.
I did not want to view my parents' faces,
or let them see me burst into tears.
I knew that we would be separated,
and my soul wept bitterly.
These would be my last days under a
sunny sky, for all that I knew would
surely die.
The stars at night would no longer consume
me with sparks of fire burning bright.
There is nothing left, except to lie down
and go to bed.
No one is important anymore, for we are all
condemned to take the same road.
Perhaps I will die before my God does.
The verdict has been signed, sealed, and
delivered.
Tonight I will not pray.
I will let God pray for me,
and we shall be His fate.
Lori Ann Day
I'm 12 years old and I write poems
about war when I'm depressed.
Death is all around me
Death, Death is all around me.
No mans land covered by a grey fog
Gunfire, and screams. It's driving me mad
Driving us all mad.
The look on the lad's faces when the Hun lie down dead
No man's land that was probably once a beautiful lush
field
Is now a blood bath with a yellow fog of gas that fills
the night's sky.
Life isn't worth living
But I'm not a coward
I'm not a chicken
I will not let my family down.
The screams cannot be heard
It's a holy day. We come out to no man's land.
The last gun has been fired. The shell has been dropped
The last man has died.
We look up at the sky. It's snowing.
I cannot talk to the enemy
I cannot stand with my enemy
I cannot do anything with my enemy.
Simply because from what I saw I believe in no god or
his teaching.
War can change
War can kill people
War is wrong.
Mal the Best
Onor Crummay
I'm a 17 year old student and have been researching
air crew poetry from WW2. I'm really interested in the second world war, probably
because my grandparents lived through it.
I have visited the WW1 graves in Belgium and the Somme.
I also wrote a poem for my great uncle who was killed
near Ypres in Belgium.
The ones who
fought
I saw poppies and trenches, About two years ago.
I was fascinated by what I saw; gravestones row on row.
I saw the Menin Gate, it loomed above my head
I found a Canadian relative, on there because he was dead
I saw my uncle's badge; found it in a tin
I asked my grandpa why; he said 'they had to win'
I saw my grandparents' photo, up there on the wall
My gran in her wartime wedding dress, by a soldier standing
tall
I met an old lady, she was a WAAF, and not so frail
Machined gunned in the street, and lived to tell the tale!
She had a look in her eyes, a passion, a memory, a clue
I asked her how she felt, she said,' We did what we had
to do'
I found my grandpa's medals, hidden in a draw
I think he should be proud, of what he did in the war
Onor Crummay
The town that
stole my uncle
The sombreness has not yet left me
As I picture them in my head
All those limestone slabs,
containing the Ypres dead
It was a battle fought,
around a mesmerising town
It was reduced to rubble;
but the angel did not fall down
I was told that if it stood there
Rising gracefully tall
That the war would soon be over,
and God would save them all
But so many did still die,
I ponder the reason why
I'm told it was the generals ,
and that when I start to cry
I passed through Tyne Cot cemetery
Found my uncle there
He has no known grave
Just a name; upon the wall
I picked a single poppy,
Held it in my hand
Then I bought it home to England
It grows now in this land
Onor Crummay
Punishment is
a short 'poem' written from an abused Iraqi's point of view about the 'light'
sentences handed out to the few British and American who have been sentenced
for the humiliating abuse. It's also about how 'cycles of abuse' and retaliation
can occur.
Punishment
Snug within your military prison
Its curtains
of ivy camouflaging your past
Your thousand daily chants of nothing
Do nothing to turn around your marital arts
So I'll flip flop in to
ransack your 'ammunition',
Lay you out to photograph
And varnish your
soul onto a Polaroid.
Mirroring your tradition.
Tina Bexson
2005
Displacement is
an acrostic poem is about how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
- can manifest itself, and the repression of war trauma (specifically
close-quarter combat).
DISPLACEMENT (acrostic poem)
Dreams, darting through a noisy mind,
Insensible,
and in disguise, they are surely benign.
So whilst shackled in a stream
of warm air,
Pillowed from despair,
Literal lies will remain
in lieu
And there'll be no wild field of all things taboo.
Can you
imagine otherwise?
Eyelids fluttered as you're ravished by his vacant smile.
Mangled limbs as he muscles in,
Eyeballs somersaulting.
Now you're
tangled within, and it's
Too late to dissociate in that bloody ring
Tina Bexson
2005
Tina Bexson is a freelance writer/journalist
(crime, psychology, war, health) who also writes poetry on topical issues.
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