No one comes back – Margaret Atwood poem

Posted on by Opher

Margaret Atwood has written a new anti-war poem. She’s dead right. It’s not just the dead and physically wounded, it’s not even just the mentally wounded and traumatised; it’s everybody. Even the winners and the untouched are changed. Nobody comes back unchanged and those changes are for the worse!

Many have travelled far

to the place of fire and blackout,

the time without words.

Some have survived,

though not intact.

No one comes back.

War is a barbarity that should be consigned to primitive times. There should be no room for it in the modern world.

When will we create a body capable, powerful enough, to put an end to ALL military action and finally put a stop to this senseless, brutal exercise? War is a stain on the whole of human history, a stain on our genetics, a stain on us as a species!

Nobody comes back. Nobody ever wins.

Forecast of War

Posted on by Opher

To be read in the voice of a weather forecaster.

Forecast of War

The government has issued a red alert.

The approaching storm is forecast to bring much devastation to the whole area.

It will start with a hail of incoming missiles, squalls of rockets, and gusts of smoke interspersed with light, patchy, infantry.

This will be followed by prolonged showers of shells along with localised bombing, accompanied by blasts of intense heat. There will be a loud droning and stratospheric vapour trails inducing intense periods of terror.

People are asked to stay under cover until the storm has passed and all tanks are empty. There is danger of falling masonry and low flying helicopters.

Shortly after the first onslaught, another front is forecast to charge through, bringing strong winds of disillusionment, a severe rise in blood pressure, with localised tornados of fear and horror, caused by drifts of corpses, leading to floods of tears.

Once the storm has passed it will leave heavy bursts of permanent trauma and emotional whirlwinds in its wake. The aftermath will entail dealing with much psychological debris and emotional damage.

There is concern among forecasters that these extreme events are merely the beginning of political climate change. The normal interchange of current affairs has been knocked off-kilter by large flurries of greed, lust and paranoia, leading to extensive frosty relations. They are concerned that we are heading for a new age where underlying trends are much hotter and more volatile.

Forecasters are presently studying the skies for any clouds of ballistic missiles which could herald a cataclysmic event likely to result in a permanent winter.

They remain hopeful that we can avert disaster through global cooperation and goodwill.

First, we must weather the storm. Stay safe. We are subject to forces beyond our control.

Opher 2.4.2022

This has to be read in the voice of a weather forecaster.

I’m not sure that it is a poem, as such. But then what is?

I was also not sure whether it was making too light of something that is so horrific.

Why are human beings so mindlessly nasty?

Can violence ever be an answer to anything? I’ll ask Will Self.

War is diabolical and all who practice it should be locked up! The damage it does to human minds is permanent. No wonder so much of human civilisation is such a mess. Most people are screwed up due to violence.

The victims become perpetrators.

A Big Black Cloud

Posted on by Opher

A Big Black Cloud

There was a big black cloud

                In the deep blue sky.

One moment sunshine

                Then wondering why.

We were shopping,

                Eating meals,

                                Laughing and planning

                                                Trips to the cinema.

Tanks rolled down the streets

                With bullets

                                Shells and missiles

                                                A howling, satanic choir.

No more normal.

                Ordinary forever gone.

After the days of terror

                Life is always wrong.

Opher – 5.4.2022

In this day and age it is hard to imagine the barbarity of war coming out of the blue.

This is Europe in 2022!

It’s barbaric.

I do not believe that the Ukrainian people really believed it would happen. One minute they were living normal lives in modern cities and the next they were hiding in cellars as the Russians turned their cities to rubble.