It’s snowing at home.
The Buses have stopped.
Dad couldn’t find a Train this morning.
The papers scream “Credit Crunch”,“Recession” and misery,
Beer’s gone up,
trials and tribulations.
In the bottom of the parcel Nan’s placed warm socks,
Kendal Mint Cake, a local paper.
It’s snowing at home.
Outside the razor wire,
rolling vistas of dust and rock,
skies stretch forever Mountains frame my dreams,
titanic fins breaking the horizon.
By day we roast.
By night we freeze.
Heroes living in our own filth.
We huddle in alleyways,
sweating and afraid in raging dust storms and stark white light,
invisible enemies snipe and blast.
Hatred from a distance, anonymous killers,
culling from the shadows.
I miss home,
I miss the snow,
I miss the Trains,
Buses even the warm Beer.
Yesterday they hit us again a patrol in a deserted village,
death lurked in every shattered window,
haunted the shadows.
We stepped from the convoy stifled by heat,
choked by swirling dust,
High Explosive hides in the smallest cracks,
you vanish in a cloud of boiling fire,
I fall,
You fell.
The sky is red,
a crimson sheet,
seared upon my eyes.
You died in clouds of flame and dust,
I live to fear another day.