Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Friday Lies

(Deceit and its outcome).

With a favourable wind at your back
and me leant forward, eyes stinging
we, surprised, stumble together.
Once more you peel off another raffle ticket
from your library of lies,
the rest are shuffled together like paper money
banded by the hallmark of your guilty conscience.
But lucky for me, the one I take
slips from my suspicious fingers
thus ruining my afternoon.
As you leave me
with the swagger of a gambler
who can afford to lose her money,
at least today,
you notice the disappointment in my eyes
and re-chalk your cruel bookmaker’s slate
with the long odds of my tortured truth

© Graham Sherwood 11/2011

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Two Minutes

(A personal armistice reverie).

The giant bell commands a silence
with its muffled clarion,
hard struck upon my leaden heart,
self-consciously I stop, put down my work
and fall into the darkness
of a solemn solitude.
From right to left the boys go running by
towards their sure oblivion
into the angry spitting guns,
I see them sprawled across the wire
abandoned laundry hanging
stained by the stench of tattered flesh.
But from the devastating shells no sound
and all anguished cries are mute
in this living hell, seen from the darkness
of my two-minutes silence.


© Graham Sherwood 11/2011