Star of Mons

Nineteen-fourteen, the battle for Mons 

First mass offensive on a foreign shore 

Two tribal gatherings, juxtaposed 

Intent upon the brutal art of war

My grandfather, still a young man 

I see him now, astride that gelding horse 

Above the thundering hooves that lifted soil 

He galloped hard across the burning gorse

I see him now, upon that desperate ride 

Important message clutched within his hand, 

Racing down the lethal lines of fire, 

A signal delivered to the high command

Then back, returning down that torrid line 

With guns and rifles blazing all around 

Dodging the shrapnel and the mortal fire 

Deafened by the conflagration sound

Mentioned in dispatches for his deeds 

His courageous act above the call, beyond 

Although grandfather bravely soldiered on 

He never made it to the river Somme

Steve Wheeler © 11 November, 2021

image source

I am thinking of our glorious past

I am thinking of our glorious past 

with heart ablaze and tears that last. 

My mind dwells on the fields of gold and green, 

still virgin in the budding, nascent spring. 

I contemplate the memories of the glories past; 

now faint and faded, almost gone. 

Sienna photos, framed in sepia tones 

a century of dust has landed on.

I am thinking of my grandfather, 

who marched with others clothed in green, 

to Passchendaele, the Somme, Verdun, 

their buttons glinting brassy, in the morning sun.

I hear the clatter of the horses bridles, 

and the boys together, marching from the fields and colliery; 

The jokes and coarse humour, the nervous laughter; 

Young men forged together in their camaraderie.

I am thinking of our glorious past, 

the Empire in its great majestic might, 

feeding young lives, systematically and sure 

as raw meat and sinew, bone and blood 

into the ravenous jaws of the machine of war.

Steve Wheeler © 9 November, 2021

image source

Over the top

Midnight,

yet the sky is white

hot with tracers and

shell bursts through the night.

We shiver, we cower

in a long dirt bower

as the after burn sears

our brains and the noise

rattles our bones

to stokes our fears.

We are cold.

We are hungry.

The King’s shilling

has no value here.

We crouch on duckboards,

knee deep in the slurry

and the mire,

that sucks constantly

at our sodden boots.

Below us, a poisoned

quagmire, stinking

with effluent; and above,

a more lethal concoction,

A world of screaming metal

and molten lead.

A scream.

A curse.

Sudden, the mud and earth

rise beneath our feet

as the wooden rampart

shatter and falls,

we find our feet again and

listen to the wounded calls

for help, for mother, for God.

Just as suddenly, the noise abates,

into a cold black silence....

....and then the whistle.

that dreaded whistle blows, repeated and repeated

along the dark lines

relayed into the blackness.

The signal of what is soon to come.

The metallic clink as

the bayonets are turned

onto cold iron, and our

hearts are turned to ice.

And then we are up

and over the top.....

We are over.

Steve Wheeler © 8 November, 2021

image source

Requiem

The madness of battle,

rapacious roar of conflict,

terrible in its bitterness and bite,

a feral snarl of discord.

Oh, the voracious appetite

of war; its implacable

ability to destroy, to utterly

obliterate each new generation!

A manmade hell; the falling shell.

Young hearts pound in fear;

young blood courses down into

red raw soil of the field,

drenching the world with

anguish and blind torment.

And still, into the fight

the soldiers march, encumbered by

authority, led by their own

valour, weighted down by

history, bedecked with the

future glories of gross futility. 

We shall remember them, we

shall weep for them and we

shall celebrate their sacrifice,

when each last post is called and

each last flag is lowered. 

But, as our memories fade

who shall, in their turn 

our own memories preserve?

Steve Wheeler © 3 November, 2021

image source

Aungier Street

South of the Liffey, below the Temple Bar 

Aungier Street bisects the old Dublin town 

With its broad intersections and busy streets 

If you’re not going up you’ll be travelling down 

In Aungier Street where the spirits are high 

Dublin’s heart skips to a raucous beat 

In cafés, watching colours as they drift on by 

to the traffic noises and the shuffling feet

There’s lurid graffiti on the hoarding boards 

down cobbled lanes, street artists paint 

To be sure, every pub is an Irish pub 

and each shrine is for a Catholic saint

Where guitars blare and the music rocks 

U2 and McGowan stare from walls of bars 

A cartoon of Lynott on a street junction box 

 says there’ll always be whiskey in the jar

From the quaint old book shop, ragged men 

eye street girls through dim window panes 

‘Cross the street’s a pub called the Bleeding Horse 

with wooden booths and mysterious stains

The world comes alive down Aungier street 

A stone’s throw from St Stephen’s Green 

Enjoy the craic where the strangers meet 

Head south and you’ll see what I mean

Steve Wheeler © 29 October, 2021

Image source: Steve Wheeler

Gravity always gets me down

Gravity always gets me down 

no matter where I am 

Climbing fifty stories high 

or strapping in a seat to fly 

in a fighter jet across the sky 

I’ll never understand just why 

Gravity gets me down

Gravity always gets me down 

no matter what I do 

When bouncing on a pogo stick 

or riding roller coasters quick 

Performing aeronautics tricks 

until the G force makes me sick 

Gravity gets me down 

Gravity always gets me down 

No matter how I try 

Orbiting twice the speed of sound 

in a space suit high above the ground 

when down is up and up is down 

and everyone is floating round 

Gravity gets me down

Gravity always gets me down 

No matter what the scene 

This seriousness is just a drag 

I’d rather hear some bright young wag 

show levity and tell a gag 

than fly the white surrender flag 

but gravity gets me down

Steve Wheeler © 26 October, 2021

image source

A Dozen Moons Ago

A thick silence falls like weather on copious tables. Knives are out for culinary butchery and the forks sing like daisies in a maiden’s hair. Glints of fine luminescence fail to glamorise the awkward tension, like a barn door swinging in the heat of a fetid summer afternoon. It’s a horn of plenty, or a banished soul wandering in the fumes forever, flying never, constant ever, in the go-over. 

It’s a choice. I am the latter.

I saw you there, I had been waiting. Under the dome of the stars, you never once glanced at me. I framed you in the oblong silence but you did not turn. I saw you with that crazy ice-cream hair and the faceless men surrounding you like flies on a popsicle --- but you never looked. Trauma on drama to be so studiously ignored.

No warm unity or hot delights within or without or between us can say what could be wet or dead or silent in this atomised darkness. It’s of your own {cold} making. One-sided relationships always arrive with a full set of catastrophic punctures.

It’s all about the mighty dollar, see. It’s all a bloody purpose of strange delights to hammer the day with weasel words and squirrelled platitudes. But you don’t see that in your glitzed up champagne world of foul delights, do you? Make the cash and splash the headlines. That’s you in your timely dance.

Wrapped up or spat out. It makes no difference. It never does. It will end in tears. But in my reprehensible defence, I told you this a dozen moons ago.

Steve Wheeler © 30 September, 2021

Photo © Steve Wheeler

High as a kite

When you burn like a flame 

you’re as high as a kite 

and you shine like the sun 

in the dead of the night 

and the reason and rhyme 

of your mischievous grin 

sets the rhythm and pace 

of the mood that you’re in

When you dance the flamenco 

you reveal all your flair 

and the moonlight reflects 

in the blonde of your hair 

and your skirt flows around 

you like waves on the shore 

There’s so much within 

I’m compelled to adore 

When you weep like an angel 

or you sing like a bird 

there’s more sensitivity 

than I’ve ever heard 

It’s a natural wonder 

how you capture the light 

when you burn like a flame 

and you’re high as a kite

Steve Wheeler © 20 September, 2021

image source

Long way down

It’s a long way down 

when finally you are detached 

from everything you have ever known. 

There’s quite a distance to fall 

when first you hear that snap 

of disconnection and you feel 

the world rush up to meet you. 

When suddenly you are divorced 

from all familiarity and thrust outwards 

downwards, into gravity, tumbling 

headover, headunder, headlong 

down, down, down .... 

Inevitably you will reach the ground 

floating softly to the earth like so many 

others of your kind. You will lay there 

helpless, lifeless in a dishevelled heap 

until the east wind blows to send you 

spiralling out into the void once more. 

Or maybe it will be the gardener’s rake 

that seals your fate.

Steve Wheeler © 18 September, 2021 

image source: Bernard Spragg

Tempestuous soul

The chords 

she hoards 

within her febrile mind 

are rich 

in pitch 

much like the ties that bind. 

Her words 

are swords 

and all that's left unsaid 

is worth 

the earth 

hatched in her fertile head. 

The wise 

with eyes 

to see and ears to hear, 

will know 

she'll sew 

with that she holds most dear. 

And in 

the grin 

of her tempestuous soul 

the balm 

of calm 

will be her final goal. 

Steve Wheeler © 18 September, 2021

image source

Hall of mirrors

I once dated an anaesthetist 

but she couldn’t stay awake 

I tried the horn of plenty 

it was more than I could take 

A radiologist once asked me 

if I would like to kiss her 

but her x-ray eyes saw through me 

even though I didn’t resist her 

I went on the town with Dali 

we drank whiskey on the rocks 

We spent the evening painting 

crazy eyes and melting clocks 

I encountered David Hemery 

 on platform eight at Reading 

He was running late, so I can’t say 

which direction he was heading

On my next available birthday 

 I’m the age of sixty-five 

I really can’t explain to you 

why I am still alive 

The crazy things I did at school 

continued all through college 

If anything they intensified 

because I had more knowledge

I’ve stepped on stage a thousand times 

to play my axe and sing 

and once I even fell right through 

on a prayer, not on a wing 

When I shared the bill with Wozniak 

we talked of Apple pies 

Took selfies with my Samsung 

and he didn’t roll his eyes

McCartney knocked upon my door 

Said he had the wrong post code 

He’d travelled quite a distance 

on a long and winding road

Ringo did the same next day 

so this must be quite some house 

All I need now’s Jimmy Tarbuck 

and I’ll be speaking Scouse

I once got on the wrong train 

and I ended up in Dover 

The white cliffs were a lovely sight 

but I wished my trip was over 

Being lost I guess has been 

for me, an old familiar rhyme 

But as my life’s so boring 

it just helps to pass the time 

Steve Wheeler © 15 September, 2021

image source: Mike Pennington

It's then you realise ....

When all of the darkness in the forest 

comes at you suddenly in a rush …. 

and all of your restricted movement 

is a constant reminder that you are 

in a nightmare dream …. 

When everything you say is rebutted 

by the others in the room, and a perfect 

storm is brewing down in the city just

beyond your window panes ….

When every little thing she does is magic 

but the magic she does is never for you …. 

When you are ignored and passed over 

continually and your talents are disregarded 

as anything significant or special …. 

When nothing else remains except four dots 

at the end of your sentence …. 

it’s then you realise …. 

this poem is about you

Steve Wheeler © 14 September, 2021

image source

Flame

I could stare at flickering flames all night

when I should be wandering in my dreams

I could gaze at a candle as it dances bright

but the minutes fly and so must I, it seems

Flames have a strange power to captivate

despite their cruel destructive capabilities 

The heat and light they furiously radiate

holds the promise to harm, or put at ease

Flames, consuming all, voraciously to eat 

everything that falls within their hungry path 

Fire that immolates with unforgiving heat 

and razes all to ashes with its fiery wrath

Flames that warm and thaw the harshest cold 

or offer radiant energy to cleanse the soul 

Eternal flame saluting all the brave and bold 

I could forever gaze upon your healing glow

Steve Wheeler © 6 September, 2021

Image source: Marco Verch

I burn my candle at both ends

I burn my candle at both ends. 

This is not what I 

would choose to do, 

but in its own way 

perhaps it chooses me.

To put my mind at rest 

is not a natural thing for me to do.

My body rests but my mind 

rages on, plagued and plucked at 

by vivid imagery and thoughts, 

dichotomies and similes, 

comparisons and homilies, 

fast flowing lists of trivia 

and entire vast coastal plains 

of raw poetry.

Tell me this, 

what would you rather 

have me be; a mind that sleeps 

and vegetates, or a mind that 

continues to create, to mould, 

to cogitate on worlds 

imagined and unreal?

Many questions hover 

here inside these restless, 

ranging hemispheres. 

Whether the enamelled nails 

adorning hands, or 

iron nails that scar them? 

Is there intelligent life 

on this blue planet, and if so 

then where may it be found? 

How can you tell one politician 

from the next, except by 

the colour of their lies?

Yes, I burn the candle at both ends. 

And yes, the wick has finite qualities. 

I may not last another night, 

I may be found at the foot 

of someone else’s bed.

You may yet discover me 

abandoned in some foreign wasteland.

I will not burn forever, and who knows 

where and when my two flames meet? 

But when they do, oh what 

glorious conflagration they will make!

Steve Wheeler © 4 September, 2021

image source: Patrick Feller

Mirror pond

You’ll find the poets everywhere 

(please take a look, try not to stare) 

and each year many more appear 

there’s more to read, so much to hear 

There are poets in every shape and size 

so many styles, they’re on the rise 

But do their words extend beyond

each poet's emotional mirror pond?

And oh, there are so many bards 

sat picking through the rusty shards 

of broken words in breakers’ yards 

There’s painful heartache on the cards 

(by cards, I mean those small cue cards 

the cards by annotations marred 

with notes revealing mental scars 

all scribbled down in late night bars)

If you listen to a poet recite 

their life through stanzas, then you might 

intuitively gain some small insight 

into what drives that artist to write 

of personal turmoil, dark and light 

and broken hearts lost in the night 

details of every private fight 

in public acts of black and white 

See, poetry is no mirror pond 

it starts like this, but soon moves on 

The words a poet pens take flight 

if others read them with insight 

and if those verses so inspire 

then other words will soon transpire, 

as self-expression, like wild fire 

provokes our literary desire

Steve Wheeler © 3 September, 2021

image source

My town was closed

My town was closed, they shut it down 

It happened in my own home town 

It should have been a normal day

But someone blew the day away

My town was closed, they closed the town 

It took a lot to close it down 

It took a madman, evil clown 

A shooter in his dressing gown 

It took a dozen shots or more 

It took a bullet riddled door 

and bodies lying in the street 

and sirens wailing to the beat

My town was closed, the roads were blocked 

The shops and houses shuttered up 

My town was closed for just one day

When a gunman blew our lives away

Steve Wheeler © 26 August, 2021

Read more about the Plymouth Shooting

Photo by Steve Wheeler

Rite

This is extreme poetry. Not for the nervous. This book cost me most of my best poems. I was saving them for a rainy day, and guess what? It rained for two weeks without a break. So here it is: My grand opus: You better enjoy it.... I'll be watching. 

Rite is available now in Kindle and paperback editions via Amazon and ePub edition via Lulu

All too soon

Leaden skies and a harvest moon 

say summer ended all too soon. 

The autumn leaves hang on like prayers 

changed to the colours of your hair. 

and we are lonely souls inside 

with yearning yet unsatisfied. 

Our hearts search for an August sun 

but autumn has already come.

As evening falls, a glittering star 

blinks into sight, but wanders far 

through cloud with golden lining hidden 

obscuring skies as yet unwritten.

and still we cling to age old fears 

as we gaze back on yesteryears, 

and leaden skies, and harvest moons. 

Our summer ended all too soon. 

Steve Wheeler © 13 August, 2021

image source

Icarus falls

Icarus, fly higher, with your new formed wings! 

Your wax will hold, as fortune on you smiles. 

Fly higher Icarus, and reach for shining things 

For he who dares traverses many miles.

Ah, Icarus, how high you fly, young man! 

Your glistening wings soar higher in the light. 

They take you far above the rolling land 

‘Til you are stolen from our waning sight.

For when on wings you dare to touch the stars 

The world is but a sphere to gaze upon. 

And take no thought for anything that marrs 

Your quest to conquer flight and reach the sun.

What’s this? A fearsome sight my eyes behold! 

A figure plunging earthward with no sound! 

My heart is frozen in my chest, so cold 

To see you fall as lightning to the ground!

Steve Wheeler © 13 July, 2021

image source

Heaven's gateway

The gateway into heaven is not forged from gold or pearls; 

It’s a trans-dimensional portal into another world. 

Transition from this finite time into that eternal realm 

is a sudden, one-way journey from which there’s no return. 

Transition is instantaneous; there’s no time to acclimatise 

as you watch your world transforming before your open eyes 

to colours unimaginable, beyond earthly comprehension, 

and time will cease to flow, inside that eternal dimension.

The laws of science and the laws of man will fade into oblivion, 

as souls fly to their destination in the beautiful Elysium. 

There, standing at the centre, above a sea of glass, 

is the throne room of the Ancient One, the future and the past

The Ancient of all Days, the Almighty God of old 

who reigns in glorious power in that City made of gold. 

Though anyone may enter, if they love the Risen One 

the gateway into heaven cannot welcome everyone.

Outside the walls are those who gamble with a loaded dice. 

The Redeemed are those whose trust lays in His final sacrifice. 

The Lamb of God will separate His sheep from the goats of sin 

on that final reckoning day, when the souls are gathered in.

Steve Wheeler © 9 July, 2021

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matt 7:13-14) 

image source

Our imaginary friends

A substitute in each and every way 

Oh, the ersatz neuronal pathway! 

Electrons firing across the gaps 

Replacement dendrites, false synapse

In digital brains that buck the trend 

we place our trust - our imagined friends 

Google Now, let’s see what’s what 

Cortana says when something’s hot 

Siri, what is the state of play? 

Alexa hears each word you say 

We’re bonding with imaginary friends 

in a servitude that never ends

[If/then] AI fails to adapt 

expect some catastrophic mishaps 

[For/next] the algorithm fails 

Caught in a loop, the program bales 

Autonomous vehicles block our way 

on the digitally rendered fake highway 

Alexa, I asked for a coffee .... 

What the.... 

Steve Wheeler © 5 July, 2021

Image from the film Metropolis (1927)

Raise your glasses

You could die of thirst

in the amount of time

it takes to get a drink

(Barman, please! 

Barman!

Over here!)

But when that pint arrives

across the wooden bar and

pulls you from the brink ...

Raise your glasses....

Let’s drink to you, 

and let’s drink to me

and drink to all, 

for all they be

a toast to every silver maid

and to every fool

their thoughts un-played

Let’s drink to the future

Let’s drink to our history

and all of the wonders 

of life in its mystery

And when finally done

and our glasses are gone

let’s raise a toast

to the staggering moon

Let’s drink to our families

Let drinking commence

Let’s raise up our glasses

as the recompense

For the lost and lonely

and the souls of the dead

for the millions of homeless

and for those without bread

Let’s drink for a lifetime

together in chains

to the liquor that binds us

and its happy disdain

Let’s drink to our country

and the drought of the Earth

to the damage we've done

and the trouble we're worth

Let’s drink to the average

to the one-out-of-five

to the kids with no water

and their fight to survive

Let’s raise up our glasses

so golden and full

Let’s drink till we’re stupid

and our thinking is dull

Let’s forget all their troubles

and just bury them all

under glasses of amber

so we don’t face the call

Let’s drown all their misery

in a lake of our choosing

at the end of a glass 

you can win when you’re losing

(Barman, please!

Barman, over here!)

You could die of thirst

in the amount of time

it takes to get a drink... 

 Steve Wheeler © 1 July, 2021

image source