A Soldiers Tale
The scum of the earth you called us
In your fancy boots and clothes,
But it was us who faced the guns
And on your orders died
For a shilling in our pocket
And a flogging on our back.
Us Tommies, English, Scots and Welsh
Aye, and Irish too, us lions of the Isles
We stood and fought around the world
And saw how big it was
And when we were finished
A quarter of it was ours.
What a way to live and die
For us poor boys in red
But we took our shilling
And our floggings too,
And when you sent us off to war
We fought and mostly won.
When we stood in that thin red line
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poem by Paul Anthony
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And then a sleeping giant woke in me
And then a sleeping giant woke in me
And time, it's power broke, was pushed aside
And I saw life's line, it's trail of hopeless promise,
It's bloody trail, stretched back a million years
And more. Of broken dreams and crushed ideals,
Of souls crying out for something ever new,
That once touched would not fade like tortured mist,
Or drift into the pain of banality
But flourish as a special sacred thing,
A god to worship, but not idolize,
Against the bitter loneliness of time.
And I saw this line in me, this mixing
Of elements and need, this restless urge,
This curse, the gnawing need to need to understand.
But knowing, the knowledge dwarfs all action
And spawns the fatal seeds of apathy.
For who can look on the gaping maw of time
And not flinch before it's harsh necessity?
Turn away in pain and anguish rather
Than face the brutal facts of life gone by.
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poem by Paul Anthony
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The Crowd Roared
The crowd roared, the lion roared, another christian faced death,
And one was as hungry as the other for another's final breath.
No tears were shed as he lay dead, no thought, no regret, no sob.
And the slaves and the lion keeper went back to do their job.
The stake was set, the fire burned, the witch screamed for her god
And the crowd of flickering faces cursed the path she trod.
But when night covered their sight they huddled round their hob
And were glad it hadn't been them who'd had to do the job.
The blade fell, the head rolled and madame murder committed,
And the crowd roared while another madame sat and knitted.
But the noise went dead when its terror bred a terror for the mob,
And none cheered too loud after that when madame did her job.
No lion roared, no fire burned, no blade flashed in the sun
But when the crowd breathed in the gas their death was as one.
Their flesh was mean when buried unseen 'neath a dark and rocky knob.
And at last a tear was shed when executioners did their job.
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poem by Paul Anthony
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