Poppies.

Dismembering, remembering.
The Poppy powder ploughs the mind.
As morphine muddled visions draw
reality’s cold blind.

A Remembrance book
in the Town Hall tells
that one whose name I bear
saw Hells.
At a place called Ypres,
So pleasant and green,
to be bloodied and ripped
to a charnel house scene.

Red as the Poppies
yet black as their hearts.
Dead tossed on
to the War plague carts.

But Death is my hero.
Death is my friend.
Death is the bringer
of suffering’s end.
Death is the portal
to where we refresh,
the rot. The decay:
The corruption of flesh.

Ashes to ashes; fill the ash bins.
Poppies to powder, poured through pins,
clouding the cares. Cleansing the sins.

Countries of clouds
and oceans of bliss.
Forgetting all that.
Forgetting all this.