Tv on wet afternoons

The Stuff of Dreams

Black and white films on tv

For viewers 'knocking on'

Offer a fair bit of food for thought.

In this world 'darling' is mouthed

By men and women deprived

Of nothing but an accent.

Their sleek cars carry them

Laughing and joking

Down long, quiet leafy lanes

To a house in the country

Covered in glistening ivy

And shining windows

Resting in a village with a green

Which tugs at the heart strings -

Like a lost first love.

And then there's the other kind:

The Jerries cut down by allied shells

And our boys doing their bit.

Where even at Dunkirk

Beaten soldiers wait patiently,

As English men on a bloody beach.

Where even the Hun does not bleed

Red blood or lose his guts

As he keels over – neatly dead.

He may have been Fritz or Hans,

But he was never, ever

A fucking Kraut.

Or the Indians circling

A waggon train

Whooping and yelling –

Certainly not weeping

For the loss of their land

As they head towards extinction.

Films, for so many, fill the void

Which is the past -

But the past, I fear, is a scrap yard

Waiting for the thief or the con man,

The artisan, or the artist -

To create a mess, or a masterpiece.