This is my second book of poems and although my first book was written and all the poems were mine, I decided to include some of my favourite poems from the last 43 yrs of my life.
I especially liked the darkness of Alan Seeger's "I have a rendezvous with death." I can understand why JFK liked it so much.
Growing up with the war poems of Wilfred Owen were experiences I wanted to have. The futility of life in front of machine guns and cannon seemed an amazing way to die.
Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori is a line from the Roman Poet Horace's Odes and translates into English as, "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country.
I suppose up to your ass in mud and bullets zinging everywhere must have really showed that line up for what it was, but I still firmly believe what God said in John 15v13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."
Maybe I'm a fool, but God and Country is something I've always believed in and the words I have spoken here today are no better exemplified than in Lord Tennyson's Poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." "... Theirs is not to reason why, Theirs is but to do and die."
I wrote a poem about the futility of war that I included in my first book, called Reflections. In the style of Wilfred Owen, saying War is wrong and wanted it to be set aside like his poems, so I included it in this book too.
The majority of my poems are deep and dark and evenly split between Good and Evil. It is the one vein of truth through these poems.
It is my continual and eternal battle to win my soul. I have written for the Paedophile and for the Murderer, the Demon and Angel, for God and to Satan.
I believe in the eventual destruction of Hell, but what of my soul.
Take a read of this book, let in sink in, maybe read it a few more times.
It is a walk through my life.
It is an open and honest account of Crap Parents, Shit stirring Sisters, Great Brothers, Amazing Wives, Nephews and Nieces, Uncles and Aunts, Brothers and Sisters in law.
