ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

by R.W. Rhodes

  after the war poem of Wilfred Owen

In Texas we still prize our purebred cattle

   while monstrous Leftists plot to take our guns.

For us a rifle's like a baby's rattle,

   with cartridges we measure out in tons.

Our cemeteries are such peaceful places.

   And there are countless young in other schools,

so we can just forget these names and faces.

   Let none restrict our guns by stricter rules.

We'll light more candles and repeat more prayers,

   and freely arm more boys, and one and all.

A maniac not armament's the slayer,

   as on our kids we place a bloody pall.

The floral tributes in the heat turn rotten.

And by the dusk these dead will be forgotten.

R.W. Rhodes was a teacher for over 40 years before retirement. His classes ranged from global religions to death & dying. He published a series of hand-crafted books, many for children, with The Catbird-on-the-Yadkin Press in North Carolina.

THE WORD WAR

by Ralph La Rosa

Remembering Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

 

He wrote in verse about this word

on a blank page as pale as death.

Though silent, it is mindfully heard.

He wrote in verse a word of the absurd

sweet lie: pro patria mori earns a reward

of decorous honors for one’s last breath.

He wrote in verse about this word

on a pale page—on repetitive death.

Ralph La Rosa’s most recent book is My Miscellaneous Muse.

WATCHING THE BURNING OF NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL ON MSNBC WORLD NEWS

by Alan Catlin





The day after
Palm Sunday

in Paris is now
Black Monday.

The flames
oddly beautiful
at night

like fire fight
mad minute
tracer rounds
in the jungle

or the rockets
Wilfred Owen
was transfixed by

in the trenches
of a no man’s land
during World War 1.

The Nazis were
supposed to burn
the city as they left

but disobeyed
high command
orders.

When asked
Is Paris Burning?

There was no
answer.

Paris is burning now.


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

CHANCE ENCOUNTER

by Robert M. Chute

Found at the annual library sale, stained but
solid and readable, a New Directions Paperbook:
The Collected Poems Of Wilfred Owen for
twenty-five cents. Chance may lead you to the light.

The book discovered on a cluttered table
like some long buried, corroded, unexploded
World War I artillery shell French farmers still
turn up by chance — bones long leached away.

Varying brown stains, mostly on the cover and
edge of pages (coffee we assume), made
random illumination fitting for his last-minute
mis-chance death, that particular bullet

not seeking him in particular as the war wound down.
“Nothing personal,” Death said: November, 4, 1918.


Robert M. Chute's first poem for TheNewVerse.News was posted on August 6, 2008. Chute's book of poetry based on scientific articles, Reading Nature, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.