To start with the good bit – my collection of poetry and prose, No Cure for Shell Shock, is available as a free download if you just click below. No Cure for Shell Shock (PDF) No Cure for Shell Shock is intended as the antithesis to the war story. Each part of this collection […]
War
15 posts
They can bury me, beneath ten, a hundred, a thousand corpses. I won’t care. Suffocate me with the dead, fix me in place with carrion for a casket. It means nothing. When morning comes, and it will, I’ll rise again. Same as I always have. I see them. I see […]
‘You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. They’ve given you love, all the love you’ll ever need. You are blessed.’ The woman had been crying and repeating herself for hours now. No one was staring at her any more, though a few dull eyes still […]
Another piece from No Cure for Shell Shock today… There are no secrets here. No lies, no surreptitious half truths, no unwitting falsehoods. It’s terrifying. This honesty. This stripped down, acid cleansed, bare-bones city of truth. Full of brutalised inhabitants, eyes fixed on the inanimate, exhausted by anything human now […]
I’ve been here before. I’d almost forgotten, but I’ve walked these streets. Back when they were streets, defined by walls and pavements and order. I’ve met these people too, back when they were people. Is that right? Did they stop being people at some point? Did they abandon their humanity […]
They did dark work. Heavy work. Barbaric work, some people said – but never for long and never too loudly. ‘Who cared?’ was his reply. At the slaughter house his father did dark work, heavy work, even barbaric work as he buried his arms in blood and swung his blade […]
It was the third column of the day. The novelty had worn off now, the mood had changed. On the arrival of the first one, marked by an earth trembling roar of diesel engines groaning their way through barely passable streets, virtually the whole village had turned out. Children shrieked […]
“Go and get some close ups. Don’t forget the faces, always get the faces.” The cameraman nodded and ran off through the wreckage. He was the perfect tool for her, he did whatever he was told and didn’t hesitate. She had no idea why, most of those she’d found herself […]
‘Mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy…’ It was all he could hear. The screaming from the family in front of him had stopped, the shouted insults and encouragement from the men behind him had faded into nothing. He could still see their mouths move, all of them, almost in slow motion as […]
He refused to look at me. I stared, I hated, but he refused to see. I lived through my eyes, for those long minutes. I tried to leave the rest, to let him have it so that whatever he took wouldn’t be me. I failed. For all that I placed […]