Easter Eggs and Tulips
Grandaddy was a quiet soul, born in 88 on a spring day.
He often stopped to graze his sheep, on the lush green grass shoots in May
found at my grandmother’s old house, where she played with dollys and jacks.
Knowledgable gardener by trade, he grew crops and purple lilacs
catching a beautiful maid’s eye, some 20 years older was he,
and yet from his earliest glance, he was steadfast to his Corrie.
He planted stately green magnolias, bordering the road and our land,
growing his own pipe tobacco, his battle with bamboo most grand
exotics brought from the Great War, in France’s trenches he sat long
wondering if he’d make it home, the mustard gas a near swan song.
I have childhood recollections, of you digging in the dirt bed
planting Avignon tulip bulbs, silky pedals flowering red
bursting freely with Easter Eggs, cleverly hidden from our sight
by gentle liver-spotted hands, unfurling them with slow delight.
You left us when I was but nine, my memories are vague shadows,
dreams of you with a spade in hand, smelling sweetly of pipe tobacco.
After Their War
David J Walker
There was only desire and comfort/convenience
Laced with certain frames of entertainment
in between the crap games played with life
Everything OD green was repainted
except the screen with the
Signal filled cable
Nothing was on except a thousand reruns
From the dawn of television
And another thousand Audie Murphey movies
Mother may I borrow the View-master
Father will you be done soon with the Funk & Wagnall
The Earth will end in a thousand-year freeze
After a nuclear war Says my science teacher
who said to look it up
Marks grandfather was a WWI soldier who
Knew Captain Truman
He still Screams at night when
the bombs start falling
again
An Uncle got a fake leg after the Battle of the Bulge
He never said anything and I was afraid to ask
My Draft Number was high but
I volunteered to anyway
Did anyone contemplate life
after their war
If so
What did it look like to you
Famished and flagging footsoldiers;
facing fatigue, fitful fever,
faeces and foul, foetid fungi.
Fostering feelings, frustrated,
for this faraway, foreign field.
Forays so fraught with fine failure;
forfeiting furtive and fiendish,
fatally fettered from the first.
Forged by such fatuous fawners,
for folly to feud for a field.
Forced forwards with fleetness of foot;
firearms flash and fragments fly far,
feigning the firmament aflame.
Forces fight so ferociously,
fratricide set free on this field.
Forthright and filial feelings;
families of fine forefathers,
fought fiercely, for fear we’d forget.
Familiar flora forms focus,
for the fallen in Flanders Field.
- - - - - - - - -
8 syallables on every line (www.howmanysyllables.com)
November 2018
Entered in Brian Strand's "Contest No 515".
(1st Place)
I wanted to do something special - and a bit different - to mark the centenary of the end of The Great War (11 November 1918). This poem is dedicated to all the brave souls lost defending freedom during that terrible conflict (and all conflicts since).
U-boats sinking ships
and Red Baron in the skies
welcome to the war
As dusk their line visibly bows
Cropped heads beneath mounds fold
Glum shadows through addle fields row
Listless turrets sprout o'er demarcated woe
Sallowed eyes in bleary sockets rolled
As dusk their line visibly bows
Shocked ears to concussive barrage close
As sighs from clogged lungs are paroled
Raspy shadows through addle fields row
Smoldering smoke in singed heavens glows
Vaporous cloud o'er scout binoculars scrolled
As dusk their line visibly bows
Each rifle into a sterile stack goes
Rumbling caissons to dark corners doled
Steel shadows through addle fields row
The fog of war o'er dazed minds flows
An eerie wind curdles each silent mold
As dusk their line visibly bows
Wispy shadows through addle fields row
Treading lightly through snaking,
muddy trench
Squeaking boots with slippery
grooves synch
A mass of matted flesh bares its
rotten stench
Thirsting maggots, doting flies
cannot quench
No rustic accoutrements adorn, not
even a bench
Deep longing for warm touches of
caring mother, practiced wench
But only cold, rancid rain does
shriveled limbs drench
In crowded hovel, selfishly hoarding
space, miserly grinch
On the perimeter, attentively
guarding every blood-soaked inch
At the sound of concussive fire,
conditioned body doesn't flinch
Chiseled teeth in tandem solemnly
do clinch
Only my spent gut, as churning
butter does wrench
With dutiful vigor, watching every
strand of demarcated pinch
At the slightest, forward motion,
my hawk eyes squinch