The Poppy

The scarlet stain, they ram it on us,

a badge, a violated prayer, across the chest,

a scar they brand.

But whose fallen? I snarl. Whose?

Not the children of Palestine,

not those pulverised beneath the boot of empire,

power’s cold, unyielding embrace.

They gasp, "never again,"

a hollow echo,

a festering lie,

as genocides gorge themselves, sickening,

under a blood-soaked sky.

And the galling farce of it,

So soon after Soldier F walks free,

justice butchered, a cold, unfeeling report.

The royals,

pomp and circumstance,

a gilded cage of grief,

their diamond tears, cold,

their sorrow, brief, a performance for the cameras.

While land chokes on the rot of shattered bodies,

from Derry to the Dnieper,

they lay their wreaths like blindfolds,

and the true cost, it just keeps gaping, a wound that will not close, a putrid scar.

This poppy, stained,

once a field of Flanders' sorrow,

a torn flag in the mud, blood-soaked earth,

now a corporate brand,

shoved down our throats for tomorrow.

A symbol mutilated,

history rewritten,

a crimson opiate,

numbing the nation's gut, a sweet, treacherous lie.

The poison dealt to China,

a bitter, twisted leaf,

opium wars, the empire's greed,

from Kandahar to Canton,

a history of blood-soaked trade.

Empire's gorging profit,

built on oceans of human misery.

And now co-opted,

by fascists foaming 'our country back,'

Hitler's ghost grinning on a revisionist track.

The very evil those men bled into the mud to fight, with desperate, dying breath,

now a badge on their arm,

a crimson drug,

designed to make us believe.

The nameless graves, the silent, countless dead,

Not just the glorious few, but millions bled.

The faces blurred, the stories never told,

beneath the crosses, in the bitter cold.

No gilded plaque, no royal tear for them,

just bone and dust, forgotten by the Crown's cold gaze.

But there's another bloom,

a quiet defiance that pushes through the concrete,

the white poppy's honour,

a different alliance,

a truth screamed in silence, a whisper of dissent,

for peace, for all lives,

a fierce stand against war,

against the machines that grind us down,

When the world is broken.

They gouge it on the Irish,

a cruel, mocking gesture,

forgetting famine's rot,

forgetting every fester

of colonial wound,

a scar that still weeps, a generational pain,

while the West wipes its hands clean

of blood-soaked gains, and turns its back.

No poppy for the Black and Tans' ghosts,

no red for those who clawed against the system, with bare hands and broken hope,

just a silent, crimson shackle,

a uniform of complicity,

a chilling cackle, a silent, choking noose.

My great-grandfather,

bleeding out at the Somme, but survived,

an 'X' on his papers, couldn't spell his name,

a raw hand, forced into the slaughter of a rich man's game.

My grandfather, a Navy man,

nightmares from Japan,

fought Hitler, then coughed up his lungs,

asbestos dust from a job

Poverty forced him to survive.

Their lives, chewed up, spat out, then forgotten

by the very pomp that demands this red lie.

This is my memory,

This is the blood in my veins.

So I stand un-poppied,

My spine stiff,

my memory burning clear and bright,

a solitary roar,

against the fading, failing light.