Unfriendly Bombs

Occasionally I will dabble a little in poetry. And on Wednesday, after watching the documentary Racing Extinction and hearing the news that the British parliament had voted for air strikes in Syria, I dabbled. I was perhaps feeling things were a little bleak and the world was just teetering on the brink. For some reason I couldn’t get the words of John Betjeman’s ‘Slough‘ out of my head, and went to work.

I realise this blog is meant to be about monsters and bogeymen. But the more I think about it, both can probably be found in Syria right now. So perhaps this isn’t quite so out of place as it may appear.

Syria

Come unfriendly bombs and fall on Syria
Might as well join this hysteria
Mark it as a disaster area
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Evil doers barely in their teens
Lost hearts, lost lives, lost lands, lost dreams
Lost minds, lost breath

Mess up the mess we’ve all talked down
Reduce to rubble a once safe town
And replace with new enemies of the crown
For twenty years

And get that man with darkened skin
The likes of who must never win
We’ll never hear over all our din
Their women’s tears

And smash their chains but keep the yoke
And smash our economy in a single stroke
Let them become our dirty smoke
And make them yell

But spare the ones who’ve had it bad
This is the action of a stinking cad
It’s not their fault that we are mad
They’ve tasted hell

It’s not their fault they do not know
We dismiss their plight on radio
It’s not their fault we made them go
To bury their dead

And talk of court and words of liars
In wrecks of burnt out cars
Those who daren’t look up to see the stars
But bleed instead

In labour camps they do not dare
Speak out to us as in we glare
And dry their eyes to match our stare
And silence their wails

Come unfriendly bombs and fall on Syria
Get it ready for the next era
This is a case of mass oblivia
The earth exhales.