Celfypridd

 

There’s something wrong

I’m pretty sure about it

But I’m having trouble

Putting my finger

On what it is right now.

 

At times I feel

As if my mind

Is being split in two

Maybe three, maybe four

It’s hard to keep tabs really.

 

Politicians

Go to war

To make peace

But the war grows

It seems out of control.

 

So to contain

The growing war

That they are unable to contain

The politicians decide

To start another war.

 

Politicians are wise

They know what’s what

And what they are doing

So I consider

It must be part of a plan.

 

But one part

Of my brain

Maybe it’s the left

Asks if there really is a plan

Or whether its idiocy.

 

After all history

Teaches us lessons

Not to do

Certain things again

And politicians are wise.

 

Some politicians

Studied history

In Universities

With many spires

They must be wiser than most.

 

But another part

Of my brain

Says you can’t be serious

Politicians are oblivious

To the past.

 

So the world is at war

Its spreading

Wherever you look

Like some kind of fire

Nobodies  dousing  the flames.

 

But every fourth year

We have sacrifices

That  take our mind off  it

And makes us feel much better

And not think of war.

 

There’s something wrong

I’m pretty sure about it

I wish the wars would stop

And politicians show

That they are really wise.

 

RAC

 

It was this place, in those days, those years

Rivers ran blackened as night in the valley

And opened coke oven doors lit the sky red

And green fields drowned in spit black spoil

It was this place where slow hunger and poverty

Stamped down, slammed its feet on the ground.

Children starved and mouths slept empty

Soup kitchens fed families hunger thinned

This place, this place where malnutrition and disease

Looked through every door, every window

And men marched to great cities to plead

Assistance for so many in a time of great need.

Men marched the length, the breadth of the country

And met the slit cold closed eyes of indifference

She told the stories of those days those years

And when it was her time to pack, to leave

She was small, just fourteen years of age

She was a small child travelling as a stranger

In those greyed days of the great depression

Think of a child travelling from a valley

To work in a grand bankers Chelsea Mansion

She spoke of survival, the cruel vicious lips

The vindictive unsmiling eyed housekeeper

Just because she couldn’t speak words of Welsh.

She worked as a maid for a florin, a few pennies

To send back home to her family in the valley

To support her parents, her brothers, her sisters

And in that she was like so many valley children

In that time, in that place in those years.

 

Excerpt from long poem.