Andrew Wilson still works part-time as a factory manager in Bradford, West Yorkshire and when not working, writes for pleasure. He has been a signwriter, painter, architectural draughtsman as well as a restaurateur and other food management roles. Working in many roles is a source of inspiration and as an early adopter of reinvention every few years, his philosophy is use it or lose it…
Andrew is indebted to his AWA Writing Group and it’s facilitator – Deborah Bayer for their nurture and encouragement…
A Warning To the Witless
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us
Supporters held in thrall, dismayed as truth hits home
Democracy is murdered as those fools stand by – witless
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We poets must respond and fight with sharp-edged poems
Not just to mourn our lost love, blazon our distress
But as a call to arms for all to rise and seek redress
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us…
Blood from a Stone
Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeerah throughout the conflict
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story
Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting
Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation
- the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food
even for the captors…
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people
In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies
So much for the "War to end all wars"
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland...
