Battle Cries Tonight
The Crusaders marched from Rome
To build castles on the sand
Armies of messiahs
Draw the ancient bloodline of Abraham
Jesuits Zionists Sanhedrin and Ottoman
Across the dusty temple of far off Jerusalem
Not too far from where the weapons are made
Every franchise of faith proclaims its own brand
From back in those days when the trenches stank
Now a fading glory throughout the land
Armoured men huddled in tanks
Ordered to attack at the rising tide
No time to think of wrong or who’s right
They say He’s got the whole world in his hand
Sunni and Kurd or a secular humanist neophyte
It’s those same old Battle Cries Tonight
*
The Crusaders marched for peace in our time
From London to Moscow along the Rhine
Berlin to Paris democrats bang a post-colonial beat
Shaping a continent with a spectre close behind
Public handshakes private meetings
The camera’s glare the world stage
Leadership issues take a back seat
To making chirpy sound bites
On the morning’s front page
One world developing nations
Protected by mercenaries
To deliver freedom and dreams
And foreign translation
Rattling sabres and teacups
In media charade
From the diamond market
To the hookah arcade
Every model material girl’s
Delight
Diplomacy of a super power
Abroad
That’s the echo of Battle Cries
Tonight
*
The Crusaders marched for equality and rights
Social advantage votes and fair pay
Cash strapped digital marketing
A public opinion sample
We’re paying backhanders
Investment’s the game
To charm all the hustlers
With another long shot gamble
Casinos they’ll build
In rundown estates
Blackjack and poker
With neo-kamikazes and ravers
Every word spin dice roll of the Roulette wheel
With these old fascist
New labour
Anti-social behaviours
An imagined rising
Moral consciousness
Existing on the right side of
Knowhere man
As if there’s a line between
Black and white
Rich and poor economic divide
It’s more of those Battle Cries Tonight
*
The Crusaders marched for the environment
Renewable energy solar wind turbine schemes
Rockets and radar preserve the Earth’s health
In multitudes of movie disaster themes
Nuclear subs and Russian intervention
Off the Arctic melting snow covered shelf
We call in scientific experts and intelligence teams
To pore over the evidence with microscopes and laser beams
Organised government criminal prevention
Police want more cash and more iron cages
For animal activists painted like death
Who go on test tube rampages
The polar landscape shakes in a tremulous wake
As biomedical technology develops new pills for your aches
Those conservative family values
Hidden behind war games
Put our future at stake
With plutonium rich nations
We pick and choose
I don’t know how much more that I can take
Or realise how little I have left to lose
Against the threat of corporate might
Paving the way of the industrial machine
That’s the noise of Battle Cries Tonight
*
The Crusaders marched For global security
Media saturation against all the ills
Of hunger and poverty
Through renewable Carbon fuel cells
We queue to be Photographed
Fingerprinted
Eye scanned for posterity
And potential biological disease
While losing valuable Information
On a few loose CDs
Glass ceilings that lead to barred doors
Boys dressed as storm troopers
Landing on foreign shores
Looking for oil and water
And a few veiled girls
They’ll buy out and sell off as whores
In a mission that’s failed to ease their plight
When you hear the screaming children
That’s the sound of Battle Cries Tonight
*
The Crusaders Marched
Against a War on Terror
Burning Lamps in
The hopes Of a million Iraqis
Better hold on to your donkeys
And run with your asses
As India and China
Let missiles fly
On the nation
Of infidels and heathens who
Live in starvation
Hold on to your soul
Hidden beneath reflections of neon signs
Sit there in comfort counting blessings and gold
Hearing those old preachers and religious reverie
Through parables and prophets and these simple rhymes
Outside the howling wind of changes are warning of an early tradition
That remembers in wisdom verses and chorals of horsemen arriving
Blowing trumpets in four-part harmony from the highest of towers
Wailing in a startling fright
‘Wake up you sleepers’
Wonder in confused delight
Will it be you or could it be me
Or, would dare the mad men
Battle Christ Tonight .. ?
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I wrote this piece a few years ago, although it stayed in rough form until recently. I read it at two different poetry meetings, for feedback and to get a better sense of the natural rhythm, and was pleased with the reception but not the work. It lacked focus and an innate cadence – I wanted a military march beat to it but also an offset rhyme – and it simply wouldn’t come together without serious editing. The structure and metre had to change dramatically, and though I felt the poem had merit I put it aside until I had more time.
In light of recent events, I considered adding a verse to read as, “The Cruise-aiders left from the port of Antalya in hope ..” or similar. However, that probably wouldn’t make the ‘message’ any stronger – only more immediate. Anyway, I hope you recognise the alternating rhythm patterns and enjoy the imagery of the words. I struggled to find the right images and had wanted to create something I thought was better than adequate to develop a surreal counter balance to the text, so used a generic photoshoppy program to alter my photos – I hope you find the effort worthwhile.
Oh, to save you the trouble of looking it up – the German magazine headline translates into English as: “The fallible; The failed mission of Joseph Ratzinger” (Pope Benedict XVI), or, Benny the Rat, as I like to call him.
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