30 september 2013
War Artist
I scrawl these visions
in the light of exploding shells
and the grey sleep of a million corpses,
making my pencil the last witness
to the moments between life and death.
Truth shall guide my trembling hand
across a blank canvass that will inherit
this day’s memory of pain.
A transformation in the dark colours of suffering
that echoes the sounds of war
to a respectable audience,
taking their morning tea in England.
The epitaph of a race captured in a wooden pencil
sharing the blood of mankind
in another holy grail.
Come drink this sweet wine of youth
for it will never empty.
My pencil denied by the colours of life
creates glory on a foreign field.
The sons of mothers pose
in deaths final picture,
frozen for winter to play.
Till the heat of summer takes them away
on blue bottle wings to heaven.
A rotten imprint to torment the living.
They were once human as I remember
who came with wit and clean socks
seeking the approval of father.
All were looking for a road to be a man
but the road was a trench,
whose veins pulsated with the blood of the dead
giving birth to the shadows of tomorrow.
Shadows, shadows all is shadows
the pencil can tell no lies.
Life turned into spectres and flies
haunting the conscience of mankind.
We are no longer human beings
war in the trenches dulls the meaning of life.
Death is but a serial number and a victory
for tomorrow’s paper.
Life wasted in Judas visions for all to see.
And I who live in fear
cannot see the lines of humanity anymore.
Only images seeded in a fractured brain
whose portfolio burns in the corpse
that was once my soul.
This pencil has done its duty
The reaper can take these eyes,
eyes that see the shadows
dancing in the flickering flames of war.
A light that bears witness to my last heart beat
in the scribbles of a dying man.
My destiny foretold in my work
to spend eternity in the darkness
that surrounds the stars,
with a pencil that can draw no light.
Pass gently dear comrades from this earth,
time is the watch which knows no end.
Only the blind and the dead will hear
the last tick of this illusion.
For silence is the secret of the earth
everything dies, everything dies.