Harry Gallagher- Three Poems

The Forgotten
 
The ghost of old man Fawkes
lights up pitch black crannies;
these foxholes in concrete,
homes to the forgotten.

There is help for heroes
til they’re heroes no more;
baked desperate by deserts,
then sloshed on slopped blood.

Old soldiers never die,
they waste away in the shadows.
Super Strength can’t dampen
a thousand IEDs.

The trails of these rockets
softly powdering the senses
of boys grown befuddled
on self medication.

Still the little red flower
drips tears on foreign fields,
another century of slaughter
and we have learned nothing.


What You Smelled Of...
  
Stewed meat and pastry
and carrots and gravy
and potatoes and engines
and grease and oil
and sweat and toil
and a vest stuck to
a wheezy chest
and knees to sit on
and shoulders for small heads
and a voice that sang
The Skye Boat Song.
One line and I’m gone.
Speed Bonnie Boat…


Bracknell
 
Overspilling from London
into leaf feathered lanes
and gated estates.
Nocturne’s hallowed blanket
is pierced by the circling
and droning of jumbos,
these spray painting vandals
chemtrailing the clouds.

Eight thirty at night
and these monuments to crudeness
lie hollow and lightless,
the keys to the castle
still toiling in Toytown,
to pay for a lifestyle
there aren’t enough hours for.

Wake, travel, work, sleep.
Wake, travel, work, sleep.



Harry Gallagher has been published widely, gigs anywhere they'll have him and has two pamphlets currently available with a third, "Chasing The Sunset" (Black Light Engine Room Press), due out in January 2016.