Category Archives: War

#MarcoPolo

Great plains,
Frozen lakes,
Dirt-smeared faces,
Crawling on all fours,
Pledging fealty,
In both fear and desperation;
To he who occupies,
The raised dias,
Great King of Kings,
Kubalai Khan!

The eternal blue sky’s mandate to conquer,
He inherited,
The diversity of his empire,
He embraced,
Through the prism of violent barbarity of his culture,
He enforced his authority

Throughout eternity does his deeds echo,
And the cog that turns the myth into legend,
Is studded with savage barbs,
To scar and bloody any who venture near,
For all time.

Patience & Experience

Patience and experience,

Can you have one without the other?

Or, before you have the former, must you have a proper grasp of the latter?

Like receiving a savage beating to the head and torso:

Bearing through the pain;

While being beaten to within a whisker of meeting your maker;

And, even faced with wave upon wave of unbearable pain:

Managing to break out into a blood-smeared, broken-toothed, savage grin,

It does not make it any less painful y’see,

But it does give you perspective to abide and hope by,

To put away the hollow helplessness of before,

And mock your attacker with defiance,

To do their worst!

For, this is not the first beating you have endured,

And, though the experience left you near crippled,

You – even, now, in this present extremity – recall:

It hurt far more the first time round!

Perhaps it’s the onset of delirium and madness mixed with concussion,

But, if it provides you even the slightest hint of hesitation in your attacker,

A narrow opening:

To launch yourself  at him to rip out his bastard neck, and taste his life force ebb and flow away from him,

As he had taken great pleasure in leisurely shattering yours moments earlier;

Tables turn on occasion,

And, it is experience that allows you to judge when to time your counter-strike ;

Whereas, without patience, you would  never have reached that opportune moment at all.

Matchsticks

Matchstick men with heads aflame,

Trailing smoke signals all over the place,

Some folk choose to burnout rather than fade away, they say;

When these hotheads get together though,

You best steer well clear;

For the bonfire that ensues;

Will engulf those who tread near willingly and bystander alike;

For fanatics come in all shapes and hardly ever die alone;

As misery loves company,

So, if you have any choice in it, my friend:

Rush in haste if you must,

But, be equally prepared to repent at leisure;

For, they also say: life is not a sprint, but a marathon;

You have more time to reflect on what you’ve done (or not) than the actual doing takes.

Battlement

Staring out from the battlement,

At the gathering force of foes in the valley below,

Where the horde has amassed,

And is now whipping itself up into a deafening storm of hurricane force,

Who will be the victor and vanquished when it finally abates?

Will my blade shatter and spoil in the ferocious onslaught to come?

Or, will I find myself drowning in a pool of my own blood and gore?

Uncertainty is anathema to even the best laid plans;

An unwelcome harbinger on the eve of any battle,

When grim resolve, is the only comfort that temptress salvation will allow.

Your Tribe

Brotherhood,

You’ll search for it all of your life,

A feeling of belonging ;

Soldiers don’t fight and die for queen nor country, my friend;

Brotherhood is what we live for and die for:

It is the only battle cry that has stood the test of time;

For, we are pack animals forged into a tribe;

And, while I may not always agree with you, my brothers;

It is for you, and you alone, I shall willingly lay down my life.

Indecision

How can you sleep when the world is screaming its deafening roar outside?

Churning, twisting its chains and lashing out;

An insomniac’s day dream,

Bearing down like a Juggernaut,

I will not be crippled by indecision,

As i’ve spent a lifetime living thus;

Professional soldiers are trained to move toward the sound of violence (like a hunter to a kill);

While untrained civilians naturally flee,

A rare few will stand their ground,

Determined to make a stand;

For night or day, battle comes when you least expect it;

Some battles are unavoidable;

When neither fight nor flight is a credible option:

For, eventually, all dangers must be faced head on.

The Good-enough Guys

Good Guys versus Bad Guys;

It’s a simple tale told since the beginning of time;

The Good Guys can’t be good all the time,

And, turn into Bad Guys… sometimes,

Excuses are excuses, and become inexcusable, when:

The bad things the Good Guys do, turn out not to be just one-offs;

Revelations escape, like faint shafts of light through pinholes in the veil of secrecy,

Maintained in the name of national security, with intricate embroidery around each pinhole;

Trying desperately to disguise and deflect attention, that the veil is nought but a face-saving exercise!

Good-enough guys is what we seem to have ended up with,

And, I ask you in all sincerity:

Is that enough?

Fog of War

 

The fog of war has descended ;

Thick enough to overwhelm and blight the veneer of daylight,

Everything and nothing are the twin tools of a propagandist;

Believe not from whenst even the wind cometh;

Nor the sudden sharpness to the cold, tricking your goose bumps to rise;

Each act is a strand of a cloak of many colours or none;

Obfuscation has no limitations y’see,

And your continued naivety unto oblivion if necessary, is the only prize!

Fields of Your Youth

 

Standing in a field like any other;

Similar to the ones you ran through as a child,

Care-free giggles, laughter and screams of glee, permeating all around;

So delightfully excited to be among your peers, playing at war, tag or what-not;

Punctuated by a stern reproach to ‘get back inside’!

Triggering an involuntary squirm echoing out into the distance before fading away;

A distant whistle precipitates an explosion, like lightning shattering a moment of reverie;

The child is a child no longer but a soldier with bayonet-fixed-rifle in hand;

He stands on a field less green than muddy, a drenched swamp that’s more bog than anything alike;

His karkey greens caked in wet, cold, mud;

Reflecting on memories when he played war as a child,

The adult version of the game (he grimly observed, taking shape around him) is more stark, morbid and visceral than could ever be realised;

A charge will soon be called by bugle horn,

And, he will run through this muddy marsh with bayonet thrust out;

Artillery shells, explosions and gunfire will ring out;

Shrapnel will take turns to scar, maim and shred you and the lads around you into mangled messes;

All of this you must confront head-on;

And stop only to cut through obstructing barbed-wire before continuing the onward charge,

Y’see: your own side will shoot you dead on sight for desertion,

Ahead of you lies the only bloody salvation available;

You have no choice but to move on;

Not all your friends will make it whole or at all,

Including you, if not for the grace of God;

So, make your peace with your maker for you will not get another chance,

The games you play are games no longer;

And memories of happier times-

Made so long ago, you can be forgiven for feeling you almost imagined them-

Are all you have.