The World Is Burning, But ...

 

The world is burning, but

in a day or two the fires will be out.

They’re being water-bombed right now.

The houses and paddocks 

and the poor, trapped stock

will all be destroyed. But the fire

will be out. Only the blackened earth

will map its dimensions 

for a while. 

Some will leave and some

will stay to rebuild. The same 

as they do when it’s water wrecking

home, livelihood, landscape – when 

the big floods thunder, battering our walls, 

drowning whole towns, obliterating the land.

Turn up the aircon, these days

when Summers get longer, hotter.

They’ll figure out something before …

The world is burning, but

it’s over there in Europe, it’s

over there in the Middle East. Not here.

Turn off the news! Don’t watch!

All that maiming and starving, I know

you can’t bear, and the cities of bombed rubble.

It’s over there, it’s all over there.

It’s all over, there … The world is burning, but

go to sleep; there is nothing you can do. 

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #218.

What Did You Do in the War?

My first war, I travelled from newborn to six years old. Ration books and food shortages (yes, even in Australia) were a fact I never questioned. I lived among many more neighbouring women than men; in a house with my mother, my nana, my aunty, my girl cousin. 

My dad would arrive like a whirlwind: briefly, large and loud. For two nights I’d be kicked out of sharing Mummy's bed, then he’d be gone again. (With a crippled leg from a childhood accident, he couldn’t go to the war with most of the absent men. He was in a camp in central Australia with others not-quite-fit, training to protect us here if our country ever got invaded.)

no war here –

but fathers who came back (if)

as strangers

During the Korean War I was in my mid-teens, surviving my parents’ divorce, uprooted from my childhood home, acquiring an abusive stepmother, moving to Melbourne and going to uni, starting to date. I barely noticed the war. (I learned a version of it later, watching M*A*S*H.)

MASH taught me

American army life –

not Korea

Our longest war lasted from when I was still single and childless to my sons being in primary school. I marched in protests, I wrote letters to newspapers and politicians. Our Prime Minister reintroduced conscription shortly before announcing that Australia would join its ally, the USA, in Vietnam. Our next Prime Minister declaimed, ‘All the way with LBJ’. At the motorcade when LBJ visited Sydney, anti-war protestors lay down in the road. The State Premier yelled, ‘Run over the bastards!’

A TV newsflash too sudden to turn off: the My Lai massacre. ‘It isn’t true!’ declared my shocked six-year-old. ‘Australians would never do that!’ I had to tell him, ‘I’m afraid they did.’

At a huge rally in Melbourne, a young man spat on the road, heckling the marchers: ‘My mate died over there!’ 

‘Then why are you not marching with us?’ an elderly man demanded.

Over 80

I no longer march.

There are still wars.

My own New Year prompt for Friday Writings at Poets and Storytellers United is Fireworks!  Fireworks are intended to be celebratory – but I'm aware that there are people who can't cope with them because they have been through wars. The loud noises and flaring lights are reminiscent of shots and bombs, of horrors which no-one should have to endure and yet these people have lived through them ... and witnessed too many who didn't. So although this wasn't written to the prompt, and wasn't the sort of thing I had in mind when setting it, I feel it fits.

Ripping the Blindfold Off

 

I finally realise

(I can be very slow) –

of course they are killing the children!

It’s a genocide (we all know that) 

so of course they are ending

the next generation

before it starts. 

Before it gets a grip.

They are bombing the hospitals,

destroying maternity wards –

the new babies, the mothers 

about to give birth.

I thought they were – blindly – creating

a new generation of terrorists (war

begets war). But no,

not so blind after all. 

They are busy eradicating

the whole future 

of a whole people.

Contemplating this,

seeing more clearly

than I ever allowed myself:

I too have lost my breath.

Words have not been enough.

Decades of words, 

a century of words

failed to save the earth 

from effects of human greed.

How can I hope that words

might prevent the slaughter of children?
But words are all I have …

I contemplate changing 'they' to 'we'. Have we not been complicit?

Note:

In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. 

A Virtual Visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

 

I remember most of all the hanging nasturtiums

in the Courtyard Garden, ‘dramatic cascades’

as the promo said. There once was a famous theft here,

of thirteen Old Masters. I steal these bright flowers 

with my eyes, store them in my permanent recollection.

 

Driving away in my virtual sports car with the top down,

’Where have all the flowers gone?’ I hum to myself –

but don’t go on down that road. It leads to awareness

of war. I’ll bury that thought (and scrub the word ‘bury’).

The flowers are alive back there in the Courtyard Garden. 

They are more beautiful than dead masterpieces.

There is no need at all to remind myself I can’t smell 

those flowers, no need to imagine all the people 

buried in the rubble of wars, who will never return. 

You on the other side of my laptop – let’s pretend this is real.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Eighteen. As well as the chance to be inspired by this museum, we were asked to  'craft your own poem that recounts an experience of driving/riding and singing, incorporating a song lyric'. (I've incorporated bits of  'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'  by Bob Dylan and 'Imagine' by John Lennon.)

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

My mouth was shocked silent

when the bombs came.

They shattered my home,

killed my mother and father,

destroyed my world.

The older children cry

as they search for food.

Others screamed 

when they lost their limbs.

I lie quiet on a broken cot

in a wrecked hospital.

If I could scream

would I be fed?

Would anyone come

to take away my pain

and my filth?

I need to scream.

I have no voice.

Written for Friday Writings #139 at Poets and Storytellers United, where the title of this piece is one of several we are invited to choose from to use as inspiration.

“War is over! If you want it.”

“War is over! If you want it.”

– John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Who doesn’t want war to be over?

All of us dream of peace, don’t we?

Remembering John and Yoko, we imagine …

Instead of distant heaven, a paradise on earth, 

Simply living as one, sharing our wealth.

Or so he sang. As they built their world of love.

Violence, they tried to say, is not the answer

Ever. Yet violence was the full stop to his song.

Remember John and Yoko, their peace shattered.

If you want it, war is over. We swear we want it.

Funny how war persists, through all our history.

You don’t want war. I don’t. We don’t. Yet we empower

Our Governments – ours – which always find reasons.

Under our veneer, we are still squabbling on playgrounds.

We are still fighting for possession of the best toys

And to stand on top of the fort. Girls as well as boys.

Not all girls, but too many of the few in power: 

Thatcher springs first to mind. Not all boys either, but….

It’s a case of who profits, isn’t it? Somehow there are still 

Too many who want power and possession more.

For Weekly Scribblings #82 at Poets and Storytellers United, Magaly invites us to be inspired by the quotation I've used as my title (and as an acrostic).

Meanwhile (and because I am committed to not staying silent in the face of injustice) this is not at all unrelated – especially the opening bit: