WHAT NOW......? written by Stanley Wilkin at Spillwords.com

WHAT NOW……?

WHAT NOW……?

written by: Stanley Wilkin

@catalhuyuk

 

What now, the loss of limbs in a distant conflagration?
The seeping brains amongst poppy fields?
The myriad nature of violent death, outside of journalistic imagination
A grind of experience on which the lost youth builds.
What now? Within the shredding blasts euphoria
The élan of a soldier, in memoria

Downing drinks in the Stag and Hare
After a tour, ordinary actions reek of tedium
There is, in the conviviality, no rush of adrenalin there
Fermenting trouble establishes a happy medium.
Quarrelling with a man who wears a business suit
Is displaced adventure, smashing his face in is a hoot.

What now? A mate, a favoured friend, dies in the dirt
When whistling a tune, recalling bygone dreams, the family,
A shot coursing through his unbuttoned shirt
Deflating his lung, another shattering his knee
When he died, his platoon died too,
Metaphorically; the snipers aim was true.

Bottled up in Basra, aimlessly wandering in Helmand
A shrill event on News at Ten between politics and football,
Another death, another iconic face, the catastrophic end
Of a youthful  life.  What now? The swift end to a morning stroll
Amongst watching villagers in dry breathless mountains
Empty streams and florescent fountains.

In the terracotta dirt my soul leaked away
My final return was like a funeral celebration,
I said nothing anymore. I had nothing left to say.
I’d given my youth to a sniping cynical nation.
What now? It was over for me in a grasping world-
A gooey puddle spread beneath me as I evacuated.

Stanley Wilkin

Stanley Wilkin

Stanley Wilkin is an academic and writer whose work can be seen on Google Scholar, Google Books, Academia.edu and Rearchgate.
Stanley Wilkin

Latest posts by Stanley Wilkin (see all)