CIVIL WAR – A poem by Michael J. Whelan

Lebanon landscape: Michael J. Whelan

CIVIL WAR

 

Under the surface

the streetlights still swim

in the mirror of a black glass river.

All the birds have vanished,

their perches destroyed

as battles rage

through the broken city.

Their songs are silent

only to return

when the last gun has left,

the last bullet spent,

the ground wounded and bleeding.

Only then can they pick over

the carrion of civility.

 

Michael Whelan​

Published in POETiCA – A Journal on the Margins – Inaugural Edition Spring 2013

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WARLIKE – a poem by Michael J. Whelan

Medieval Warriors (c)Michael J. Whelan, 2009

WARLIKE

Because the troops in your karste heart

are always marching

to a martial drumbeat rhythm,

 

because of the invisible weapon

hung around your shoulders,

resting in your fists,

 

because you would rather be led

by hawkish rhetoric

than listen to reason,

 

because you negotiate peace

only when blood is spilled

and the dead piled high with time,

 

because you speak of the laurel wreath

and the dove

only after war and not before,

 

because of all this

you are foolish to believe

you are pleasing to God.

 

 

Michael J. Whelan

Published in The Tallaght Express, Edition 33, April 2013

GALLIPOLI (The Great War) a poem by Michael J. Whelan

V- Beach Cemetery Gallipoli: Michael J. Whelan 2011

Today 24^th April 2013 is the 97^th Anniversary of the ‘1916 Rising’ in Dublin, which set Ireland on the long painful road to independence. Tomorrow April 25^th 2013 will be the 98^th Anniversary of the initial landings of British and Allied troops (which contained many Irish soldiers) on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Dardanelles, Turkey during World War One. Both events occurred exactly a year to the day apart, both events saw Irish lives lost fighting both for and against the British Empire………such is the story of the Irish!

I have visited the battlefields and cemeteries of the Great War in Europe and also in Gallipoli. Their silence is very, very loud to me. This history resonates with me; I remember all those lost on all sides in the conflict.

Until very recently the story of those Irish soldiers who fought and those thousands who perished in the Great War was relatively forgotten, especially in Ireland. Whatever uniform they wore, whether Irish or British I respect them as Irishmen and women who fought for something greater than themselves, who served their country at that time.

The Irish poet Francis Ledwidge fought in Gallipoli after arriving there with the 10th Irish Division in August 1915. Like many soldiers he wrote of his impressions as he sailed past the ancient ruins of the city of Troy while on troopships, en-route to battle and destiny. The peninsula is a beautiful picturesque landscape littered with graves, many of them Irish graves.

Ledwidge was killed in 1917 on the battlefields of Europe but before this he wrote the poem ‘The Irish in Gallipoli.’

In 2011, I wrote this poem in response to my experiences of that place!

 

 

GALLIPOLI

 

 

(After a visit to the battlefields -2011)

 

Today I stood above the Aegean Sea

listening for echoes I could not hear.

The silent tempo of the ground

resonates still on unnatural landscapes.

 

The zig-zag lines where dead men toil

dug deep into blood smeared soil,

buried now with their bones

on beaches and gullies where once

they fought the Turk,

stormed the shores and hills as if thrown

against the wind by Agamemnon himself.

 

The silence bade me look towards Troy

across the Straits from Helles,

I still could hear no voice, nor thunder in the sky

except the launching waves

pushing ancient pebbles up the beach to rest,

where once they drowned the hearts of men.

 

Then behind me I could feel it,

the noise of peace and echoes of war

in a thousand monuments to the dead,

stretched out in marching order.

And there, watching me my shadow

took on the spectre of a ghost and spoke,

‘Like Hector I was the defender

brave and virtuous – but of Irish stock,

I am the soldier my country forsook.’

And in response I said

‘I have come at last to pay my respects,

I have come to take you home!’

 

 

Michael J. Whelan

(For Tony Roe)

Published in Tallaght Echo April 26, 2012

ECHOES (Kosovo) a poem by Michael J. Whelan

Kosovo: Michael J. Whelan

During my time in Kosovo as a peacekeeper with the Irish military contingent deployed there I visited many villages as we resupplied them with food, building material etc. or just showed the locals that we were nearby. Some villages were empty desolate places where the worst things had happened.

ECHOES

There is nothing left in this village
but the burnt out shells of homes,
roofless rooms and echoes
drifting across scorched black grass,
following boot prints through alleyways
and well trodden streets,
over rank smelling chicken coups,
dead pigs and silent tractors
stuck in time and sodden earth,
past the ancient cemetery and schoolhouse
to a raised ditch on the side of an infamous hill,
where the only living things without guilt
are the swarming swollen flies
feasting on the end story of a thousand years.

The echoes are not of children’s laughter!

Michael J. Whelan

Published in The Galway Review 2013

REALITY BLOG AWARD – Michael J. Whelan

April 16, 2013

Reality Blog Award

Straight out of the blue and a great surprise to find I have been nominated by Jane Risdon for the Reality Blog Award.  I am really delighted with this and want to thank Jane for nominating me and for asking me to answer the following questions:

Q:  If you could change one thing in your life what would it be?

This is a difficult one.  I think too much sometimes and worry about things that I have absolutely no control over like world politics for example and at the same time I can under estimate what impact I might have on certain things closer to home and who I am.  Like everyone I suppose I can place obstacles in my own way unjustifiably. This affects me as a person and as a writer so if there is one thing I would like to change  it would be to have more confidence and belief in myself and what I am actually capable off.

Q:  If you could repeat any age which would it be?

I suppose there is lots  a person can do if they had the hindsight and power to revisit their lives. I don’t think I would like to repeat any age of my life, it was difficult and as wonderful as it was and that’s fine, I accept it and the choices I made. However, I would like to go back and see some people I lost along the way and say things that weren’t said in time. Another thing I would love to do as a writer and historian is to be able somehow to visit or even personally view through some dimensional time viewing apparatus (just made that up) historical events and periods in the past. Wow…that would be inspiring!

Q:  What really scares you?

How vulnerable the world is, how volatile and silly the Human Race is! I spent some time as a United Nations peacekeeper in areas around the world where war had been going on for long periods. I witnessed the effects of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, targeting of civilians and the aftermath of all of this on the physical, cultural and human landscapes and though I study history and conflict and write about it as a way of understanding and witnessing it – I totally abhor it. The fact that people are quick to use violence really scares me!

Q:  If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be?

Maybe my teenage son, so I can get a feeling for how he sees the world that his generation is inheriting from mine.

Please visit Jane and read her blog and all about her work:

http://janerisdon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/reality-blog-award/#comment-789

I would like to nominate my fellow authors/bloggers for this award:

Susan Condon                    http://susancondon.wordpress.com/

Louise Phillips                   http://www.louise-phillips.com/

Trish Nugent                      http://trishnugentwriter.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/blogging-from-a-to-z/

Carolann Copeland          http://www.carousel-creates.com/#/about/4562594962

Thanks once again to Jane for nominating me for the Award, which I am really appreciative of.  Please visit the authors I have listed above and give them your support.  I would appreciate it and I know they will.

RAINDROP – a poem by Michael J. Whelan

RAINDROP

I hold on by day, but in the night

when lonely shepherds tend their flocks

bending low from arching lights

under an iron sky, the blackness

criss-crossed with prayers,

laced with phosphorous tracer

and laden with soldiers metal, I listen

to mosquitoes choosing their moment.

The sirens begin to wail but I am dead

until a single raindrop on my forehead

washes over me, your hand on my skin

a teardrop.

Michael J. Whelan

Published by Three Monkeys Online Magazine February 2013

Soldier Silhouette: Michael J. Whelan 2009

FIRST BLOOD (Lebanon) a poem by Michael J. Whelan

Irish U.N. foot-patrol, Tibnine Castle, S. Lebanon 1994. Photo: Michael J. Whelan(L)

The higher into the hills you go, the narrower

the roads become and tighter the villages. …

The journey slows to a sequence of photographic

scenes in mystical life where you remind yourself

that you are the soldier, peacekeeper,

the alien in this country.

Your convoy crawls through a sea of busy faces,

some study you as they smoke, while others go about

their business and for a moment you’re vulnerable

in the circus of a thousand yellow chicks.

The smell of spices hides the faint hint of rotting flesh.

Your body is alive capturing everything in its senses,

the flowing colours you’re experiencing dances upon

your eyes and skin as the crowd surrounds you –

your existence is lost in this market-place dream.

The sea parts: hind legs strung up by an old stained chord,

first blood is drawn. A convulsing goat’s warm froth pours

down from the gaping throat, pools out onto the gutter-ground.

The wound reminds you that you are not the invader.

Michael J. Whelan

Crates stacked high full of yellow chicks are common in the marketplaces/Souks of S. Lebanon
(Published in THE TALLAGHT ECHO 25 April 2011)