Poetry – Unseen Wounds

Posted on by Opher

Unseen Wounds

The wounds unseen

                Bleed into the mind.

Some will bleed forever

                Others leave a deep scar.

Lives have disappeared,

                Homes smashed.

Possessions lost,

                Stolen by a Russian Czar.

What help can we give

                To those who have

                                Been hurt so much?

Who mourn their loved ones?

Who can heal

                Wounds cut so deep

                                Into the tissues of brains?

Where do we find the funds?

Opher – 26.4.2022

The physical damage is obvious – the destroyed houses, the blown up schools and hospitals, bleeding, broken bodies and heaps of corpses tossed into mass graves.

The physical destruction wrought by war is devastating.

What is not so obvious are the wounds cut into peoples’ minds.

Those grieving for destroyed lives, for loved ones killed or maimed, for what should have been. Those who have lost so much.

What cannot be seen are the traumas created by witnessing the horrors, seeing death, seeing the dead bodies of those you have loved.

These images cannot be erased. These fears and grief cannot be comforted away.

These ae the injuries that destroy minds and last a lifetime.

War creates trauma.

Poetry – I think it’s you and me

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I think it’s you and me

Who decides there’s a war?

I think it’s you and me –

Reacting to the facts we’re fed

By the powers that be.

Who fights in that war?

I think it’s you and me

Dying on the battlefield

For Queen and country.

Who loses a war?

I think it’s you and me.

Some gain wealth and power

But we live in austerity.

Opher – 29.7.2020

It’s the same mob who creates the wars and profit from them.

It’s the same mob who fight in the wars, get crippled and killed and end up paying for them.

It has always been thus.

We are conned and exploited. Inflamed by the media and manipulated.

Poetry – History Repeats

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History Repeats

History repeats.

Lessons are never learned.

Fascists arrogantly strut.

Our cities burn.

The racist chants

Echo down the streets.

Frightened people keep quiet,

Civilisation retreats.

Politicians stir,

Seeking power.

Behind locked doors

Poor people cower.

The tribal game

Is played out again.

Every single person

Feels the pain.

Opher – 27.7.2020

When will we ever learn?? The same authoritarian garbage tinged with xenophobia and racist. It is always the same simplistic answers; the aggression; the fear; the anger; the wish to dominate and control; the wish to apply force; the scapegoating, superiority and arrogance.

We are faced with the rise of the right-wing with their racial purity and guns. Strutting with their violence, intolerance and aggression.

Fascism rises up and creates war. It has to be crushed back down.

Oh for an education system that creates empathy and compassion.

That would put an end to fascism. Much better than guns and bombs.

Fascism is a disease.

Poetry – The Brigands

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The Brigands

The brigands charged down the hill,

Swords raised,

With chilling battle cries,

Thundering hooves.

Callously and gleefully they butchered men, women and children,

Set fire to huts,

Raped, tortured and looted.

But those were the days of long ago.

Nothing changes.

Except, now they use drones

And ‘peace keepers’.

Opher – 12.7.2020

Once upon a time we built walls around our cities and had fortified castles; we raised armies and kept constant watch.

What a way to spend your life – in fear of brigands.

They’d sweep down with their armies, killing, torturing, looting and raping.

Nowadays we’re much more sophisticated. We do it from afar.

Poetry – Refugees and Ruins

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Refugees and Ruins

Millions of refugees

                Desperately flee

                                On foot,

                                                By train, bus and car.

Escaping

                Vengeance

                                Of Russia’s

                                                Despotic Cazar.

They leave mass graves

                In their wake.

While maimed and broken

                In basements quake.

The Russian cannons roar

                And tenements crumble.

The voice of reason

                Lost in war’s evil rumble.

Putin and his Generals

                Should be in the front line.

If they were all wiped out

                Things might work out fine.

Millions of refugees

                Desperately flee

                                On foot,

                                                By train, bus and car.

Escaping

                Vengeance

                                Of Russia’s

                                                Despotic Cazar.

Opher -22.4.2022

It is almost inconceivable to me that in this modern age an army could invade another country and systematically reduce its cities to rubble, terrify millions and execute hundreds of thousands.

It is shocking to see the schools and hospitals deliberately targeted, the people hunted down, raped and coldly executed.

It is wicked to see the civilian houses intentionally destroyed.

What is worse is to hear the propaganda pouring out to justify this invasion with its wanton destruction and genocide.

The lies are the worst, poisoning minds, generating hatred and resulting in atrocities.

War reveals the worst of human nature.

We are the most depraved and vicious animals.

Poetry – Nineteen Fourteen

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Nineteen Fourteen

It is twenty twenty-two

                But in Ukraine

                                It is nineteen fourteen.

Russia has unleashed

                A reign of terror

                                Like we have rarely seen.

In Chechnya and Syria

                They practiced

                                Their Evil art.

Firing shells and missiles

                To blow

                                The cities apart.

They are digging trenches

                One again

In European cities civilisation

                Is down the drain.

Putin is gaily singing

                Death’s refrain.

It is twenty twenty-two

                But in Ukraine

                                It is nineteen fourteen.

Russia has unleashed

                A reign of terror

                                Like we have rarely seen.

Opher 22.4.2022

We like to think of ourselves as civilised – but we’re not.

We like to think we are intelligent – but we’re not.

We like to think that human civilisation has become advanced – but it hasn’t.

We like to think we have become wise and sophisticated – but we haven’t.

We’re still the same aggressive, violent, stupid, greedy, paranoid apes we’ve always been. We’re still the short-sighted idiots who fight.

Everything is a thin veneer.

Poetry – We’ve Been Fooled

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We’ve Been Fooled

We’ve been fooled

                By years of peace

                                Where the rumble of war

Was distant;

                Where missiles and bombs

                                Fall on brown-skinned folk

                                                In lands that are poor.

We’ve been lulled

                Through days of prosperity

                                And calm,

                                                Distant from guts and gore,

Into believing

                That trade and civilisation

                                Are the new law,

And war was consigned

                To history;

                                A despicable artefact

                                                Never to darken our door,

Once more.

Opher – 21.4.2022

We’ve opened up the world and mixed with all people and cultures. We have discovered that we can get along with everyone. We are all the same.

We have united cultures and countries through commerce and travel.

The terrible wars always seem consigned to poor countries full of people who were not like us. It was terrible but distant.

It could never happen to us.

But have we underestimated the terrible human flaws – the paranoia, the greed, the lust for power and the fear?  

Was civilisation a band-aid over a gaping wound?

Have we underestimated the human propensity for violence and cruelty???

Poetry – One Day

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One Day

One day life was normal.

                The next flung into fear.

One day our houses full

                Of things we hold dear.

Now the towns are scenes of death.

Invaders seek to steal our breath.

Our cities pounded into heaps of rubble.

We huddle in basements safe within our bubble.

One day life was normal.

Once we had a home.

Once our lives had meaning

Sweet as any poem.

One day life was normal.

                The next flung into fear.

One day our houses full

                Of things we hold dear.

It will rise again,

                Out of the ashes.

                                We will build again

                                                And heal the hideous gashes.

Opher – 21.4.2022

I’ve spent the whole of my life in the modern world without being touched by the terror of war.

The wars seemed to happen in other countries far away, to people who were not like me.

War seemed primitive, a relic of the past.

It felt that we had been up trade and relationship to such a level that war was inconceivable.

Then the Ukraine happened.

Poetry – Playing games

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Playing games

Faded Empires,

Playing games

With millions of pawns.

Complex machinations

For power and wealth

In an incandescent storm.

Intrigue, threats and death,

Brinkmanship

Arrogance and scorn.

Played out across the globe,

Devoid of compassion

Greed, selfishness, care-worn.

Unseen puppet masters

Guide us through

Creating poverty and war

With paid brawn.

Inbuilt superiority,

Illusions of grandeur,

All in-born.

They play their power games

Of self-importance –

The devil’s spawn!

Opher – 13.6.2020

There is a big global game being played by powerful privileged people.

We are pawns.

Huge wealth is deployed.

They gamble with the future.

They use poverty and war as tools.

They exploit, cheat and control.

It is mega politics – beyond the politics of mere nations.

Poetry – Reign of Terror

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Reign of Terror

Planting bombs,

Planning wars,

Inciting hatred,

All part of the plan.

Sewing division,

Using inequality,

For the sole gain

Of the elitist clan.

Using religion,

Elections and politics,

For the benefit

Of this selfish man.

It is time

We put a stop

To this reign of terror

Spread through this human span.

Opher 13.6.2020

If we are intelligent creatures we should be able to find a way to live on this planet together, without fear, for mutual benefit. We should be able to coexist with all the other forms of life without displacing them, making them extinct.

If we were truly intelligent I think we’d find a way to banish poverty and create harmony.

If we were intelligent.