Breakout

[billy]

The carvery lunch at Grandad’s RSL
is all we can afford these days, a treat
for battlers. There’s a smell of yesterday
piped across the floor, where vets hum foreign songs good image
and drink about the war.

But the carpark today has a busload of
photo-collectors, clicking their Nikons and
smiling inscrutably. And he coughs and checks,
the old man, balks and walks away.

Don’t go in there, son, won’t go in there
Ripped out my nails and burned off my hair, son
Don’t go in there, I won’t go in there these three lines are poignant in showing the horrors still within him

So off to the caf for a java and a posh bit to eat
while his demons devour five dollar pork
at the opposite end of the street
and his yesterday-smell is further away
than tomorrow’s insistence on leaving behind
the crippled, the starving, the burned and the blind
the edges torn out of the mind

The garden that Nakajima created is quiet good juxtaposition of good and with the bad in the 1st three verse.
in contrast, each November when tireless shutters
and lenses are stowed beneath the hush. Sakura Matsuri
still echoes, though the best blossoms have long since blown
away. I don’t ask if there are cherries on Kokoda
or lining that damned railway. Why rake the sand
with the nails of dead soldiers?

It is a haiku landscape that sparks the dreaming. This
silent bonsai is not its father elm. What seems strange
is simple through another eye, and I
can only ask.

Grandad lived and died in yesterday. He is headstone does it need an 'a' before headstone?
heavy on hard won ground, but I found a pebble
that sang the songs of mountains. the last verse has a certain elegance about it, i wanted to say beauty but i'm not sure the sadness of the first two lines allows it to be.

it moves easily from in an out of dark times. Matsuri show us as does the pebble and the nails of dead soldiers that there comes a time for forgiveness,
i love the build up to a peaceful thought. some excellent narrative, lots of sadness balanced by hope.

all jmo. on an almost perfect write. i'm sorry i couldn't be more constructive.

thanks for the read.