The Fantasy of Reality

There was a time,
I don’t quite remember when,
My mind worked ahead of me
At things I scarcely knew
In a world of my imagination,
Where only nice things happened
And horrid things were few.
I think they called it fantasy,
Though to me it was all new,
My friends were real,
The fields were real,
But reality was overdue.
I still play games inside my head,
But now I write them down
And fantasy becomes reality
In a world of words renown.
"Once upon a time..."

The Last Sabre Charge of the Yeomanry - 1917

Under the African sun
On the burning sands of the Huj.
Armed with sabres and incredible courage
They charged rather than run.
The men of the Worcestershire Yeomanry
Faced twenty-thousand men,
Three Howitzers, twenty-one artillery guns,
The weaponry of the Hun.
They were told ‘Just point your weapon and aim
Let the speed of your horse do the rest.’
Blades slashing and flashing they charged
Like demons they rode, setting the desert aflame.
Sand billowing, voices screaming in the sun,
They charged a superior foe,
Fear entered the enemy and even before the end
Every Yeoman was a hero as the enemy started to run.
One hundred and eighty one cavalry
Scattered the Turks across the desert
And Sabred alongside their weaponry
Killed all the artillery men.
Thirty-six heroes died and fifty-seven were injured,
But by a hundred years or more
They set back the Ottoman Empire,
A feat unequalled in war.

Additional Information:

For a personal recollection of the Cavalry Charge at Huj, by Corporal Darcy Jones of the Worcestershire Yeomanry, please click here.

The Economics of War

“Send ten thousand men.”

“Make sure you’ve got the body bags

To bring them back again.”

The end of the beginning

Somewhere there was a beginning,
But I am near the end.
Could it be, in this frenetic, confused world,
That I am nearer the beginning than the end?
Is the end really only the beginning?

Unspoken

The loneliness of one
Is nothing compared to the loneliness
Of two who do not speak.
That is a loneliness
That withers up the soul.

Shadows

Night, when all the shadows
Become lurking dragons
Waiting to pounce.
And the shadows of the mind
Become unspoken horrors
And overwhelming obsessions.

Brute force

Brutes blare their artificial suns,
Hissing, spitting carbon-arcs;
A cacophony of chiaroscuro.

Silence

There is silence,
Then a whisper of wind
Shivers the leaves.
The Wind becomes a light breeze
Twigs rustle and dance in happy obedience.
The wind encouraged by this dance
Grows ever stronger, more demanding,
Branches begin to sway and bend
Until entire trees are thrashing to the
Tune of an increasingly dominant wind.
Anger is emphasized by a darkening sky
That growls and laughs harshly.
Black clouds applaud loudly
With flashing drumsticks of light.
Encouraged by the thunderstruck sky
The wind turns into a howling hurricane,
That sends man’s toys tumbling
Around like so much rubbish.
Cars and caravans roll and clatter around,
Tiles fly from the roofs of buildings and
Rafters crack and sway whilst man himself
Scurries from hiding place to hiding place,
Finding none from the probing fingers
Of the fiercesome shrieking wind.
Trees tear their roots from the earth,
Their death throes crashing and thrashing
Everything in their stricken falling.
Walls and buildings crumble and rumble into
A nothingness of a land laid to waste.
The wind pauses to look around at the destruction
It has wrought and passes on, nature triumphant. And then in the aftermath
There is silence.