Experience Chas Lotter's Poetry...
War Stories
Beware the loud ones
Who refight their escapades
In voices which leak cigars and beer.
Who take a high-decibel umbrage
At the slightest trace
Of disbelief
Look instead for the quiet ones
Who shout the least
And have done the most,
Whose exploits you only hear of
In snatches
From others
Winter Night in the Bush
The night was cool.
Hordes of stars stared down from a cloudless sky
As the mountain wind caressed the grass
And the moon lit up the ridge.
From where I lay
I watched satellites track through the heavens
Drew on my smoke.
Well hidden,
Some food,
Some water.
A man could be
Content with this
Fleeting Visit
Have you ever heard
A dead man talk ?
Have you ever walked
With ghosts ?
Have you ever sat alone
And felt a spirit run his fingers up your spine ?
I have sat with the shade of a long-gone friend
And heard him whisper in my brain
As his tattered shadow moved
In an ill-lit corner of the room
Journey to a Deserted Farm
The windows were empty
The lawn was choked with weeds.
The whole place shouted "No-one home"
In every sign of neglect.
All of which may seem mundane and unimportant, for
there are hundreds of farms like it
Whose owners were forced out
By the war.
But this one was far more personal
To me. This was my father's home.
I walked the empty rooms which shouted at me
Of my childhood.
I walked the web of memory
Amid bitterness
At what the war has done
To us.
Appeal
Don't mind my hands
Padre.
They shake like this
When I'm in base.
I dream of death
Padre.
Scream in the dark
To chase the nightmares away.
I drink
Padre.
To keep my memories
At bay.
I am nineteen
Padre.
Why then do I feel so old and worn ?
Why can't it be
Like in the books
Padre ?
Padre.
For God's sake answer me!
Ashes and Dust
Turn back the years
Pick through the bones
We left behind.
Examine our few remains
In vain.
The search is useless.
For the raw, rich stuff of life
Has long since fled us.
Resurrect our rusty rifles
From the ever hungry earth
Carefully place the faded rags
Left of that which clothed us
In warm museum halls.
Guard well the curling, yellow photograph
You found.
Gaze down upon our faces
Frozen
In a tattered message
Addressed to those
Who are still to come.
Argue, analyze, theorise
On the force which drove our people.
We were only human.
We bled, loved, laughed and cried
And we laid
The foundation stone
Of the years you live in.