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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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