Making Believe

By Nora Hussey (LLARC)

From Troy to Baghdad they’ve been to war…

Standing alongside the marauding Greeks in Troy,

Witnessing Cromwell and his murdering rage along the Shannon,

Weeping with Whitman as an uncivil conflagration roared,

Toiling in trenches and makeshift hospitals while the Somme turned crimson,

Making munitions as Anne Frank sang in her Annex cage,

Raining pesticides on green fields, poisoning all sides In South East Asia.

Weeping with terror in Bosnia as rape became a weapon of war.

Huddling in desert outposts as unseen enemies crouched in their bunkers,

Wars so horrible in their creation they brought night terrors.

Painstakingly wrought and memorable to the many.

In the end however these conflicts took no lives, and shed no human blood.

These were wars on pages, fought for an audience and ending with a curtain call.

The dead arose, took their bows, removed death with Noczema.

Then repairing to a pub to discuss how well the stories were spun that night,

Congratulating themselves on another tale well told in a theatre of war, far from any reality.