Ladies of the Wood, by Georgia Kelly

Two oaks lie in a collapsed embrace,

Shrouded by inconspicuously

By creeping claws of ivy;

Seared limbs line bruised bodies

 resting, peaceful,

on their bed of moss.

Amber confetti dampens

Ablaze. A blur.

Over mirrored

Hips.  Lips.

Take me to your woods

Where buds bloom at our touch,

Where dew melts like ice

On warm tongues;

Wher our song plays soft at first.

Not seven inches of

Dull notes, blaring

To bands of woozy teens,

Drunk on the hopes of

Holy matrimony.

Here the trees play

Only for us. A birds song

 interjected with every

pulsing breath.

Coiling,

Twisting,

Into a torrent;

Teasing. Until it

Slices open our

Goosebumped skin.

Revealing only our

Beating. Bleeding hearts. 

Offline, by Graham Attenborough

She was taken from her cell by two guards in their google uniforms. At the end of a long white corridor, still flanked by her guards, she was greeted by a smiling young woman who looked up briefly from a glowing tablet as she was brought in to a gleaming office, then looked down again.

'Please sit,' said a man sat behind a Habitat table adorned with a magnificent digitalised flowering plant.   She sat, the one-piece paper suit they had given her to wear crackling as she did so. 'What is your username'? the man asked.  She said nothing. 'Your google account? Amazon? What is your smart phone number?'  'I don't have a mobile' she said, 'or a username, a blog, a Facebook page or a google account. In fact, I don't even have a fucking computer - okay!'

They all looked at her as though she'd just said that she butchered babies for a living.  The man turned to his screen, tapped on it a couple of times and turned it towards her. Immediately she recognised herself walking along a fairly busy street. She saw that as other people walked along, the giant billboard screens flashed up their usernames and quickly directed them to their next shopping destination. A hint of a smile danced across her lips as she saw how the screens went blank as she passed them, unable to identify all her consumer wants and needs.

'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'no, it's not okay. Do you even have a bank account?'

'No' she said, 'I do not have a bank account. I don't want a bloody bank account and I have a democratic right not to have one if I choose.'  

The man laughed.'Oh, democracy. That old chestnut. Didn't you know? We have no need of democracy in the age of google because we have no need of governance. We are all free and equal under google. The world has moved on, my dear. You see, you and your kind are still living in the bad old days. That's why you insist on calling yourselves neo Luddites and Latter-day Diggers. They tried to halt progress too, didn't they, and of course they failed. I suggest you read about them sometime, on Wikipedia, that is - when you're back online. And you will be back online, reconnected to the net, because that is the only rule passed down by google in its all-consuming wisdom.  

'As I say' he went on, 'we are all free to choose under google but our choices must be made online. That is the rule. Everything we will ever need is to be found on the worldwide web and you must be a part of the great google family. Otherwise, well, you are nothing, nothing but a shadow, a waste of digits, an affront to consumerism. Someone like you is a non unit. You might as well be dead.'

'Are you actually saying,' the woman said, 'that our only purpose is to shop? To buy stuff online?' 'Of course', the man replied. 'What other purpose could we possibly have?'  She looked at the man aghast. She longed to go home, to her dogs, to her books and her vegetable garden. She didn't need google to be fulfilled. She only needed her freedom, her friends, love.  She said: 'you can't force me. You can give me an iPad and a username but I just won't log on. I don't want you, I don't need you.'

The man sat back in his chair and laced his fingers into a steeple.  He said, 'Nonsense, we all need google. Google is us and we are google. You see my dear, if you were online and keeping abreast of google events, you would know that the latest google nanotechnology means that we can now connect you to the web intravenously. You should consider yourself privileged, you shall be one of the first units on earth not merely to be connected but  actually to be a living part of google itself. There shall be no logging off, even as your physical body sleeps, you shall live and breath within the net, being updated instantaneously. I'm envious I can tell you. Just imagine, you will be as one with google, and, gradually, as this marvellous, google-given technology is rolled out, more and more of us will join you, our minds and bodies sharing forever the power and the glory of the one great google!'

Realising there was no escape from this madness, the woman began to panic. She stood up and tried to run, but the two google guards grabbed her by the arms and held her fast. 'They will take you down to the technicians now,' said the man kindly, 'we shall meet again my dear, online.' 

He stood to attention, tapped his chest with his right hand before stretching his arm out before him. 'Google be praised' he said, and the others responded.

'Praise be to Google!'

Her legs gave way beneath her.

Night Worker: an extract, by Peter Morford

He stumbled over something in the alley.  It was a man lying across his path, his head to one side, eyes open. Ben crouched down and shook him. Slapped his face; checked for pulse in wrist and neck.  No pulse, skin cold, dead.  The man looked about 50. He was wearing a dinner-jacket and his bow tie was undone. There was no sign of injury, as far as he could see.  Instinctively, naturally and professionally, he reached inside the jacket for identification.  A small wallet contained a Maestro Card in the name of Charles Spencer, credit cards for John Fortune and Henry Jessop, and a couple of £10.gambling chips. There was no driving licence and no address. Ben knew the type. The dregs of humanity.

In the other inside pocket he found a gold propelling pencil and a wad of used twenties, bound in a paper band.

What to do now? I should call the Police and ambulance, he thought. But why? This obviously suspicious character was dead; nothing could be done for him.  Ben really didn’t want the bother, not with his churning stomach and early sign of influenza. Then he did something he had never done before.   He pocketed the cash, except for a couple of £20.notes, and replaced the wallet.  He looked carefully around. He was alone and he knew there were no cameras in this alley. He walked quickly for the half-mile back to his car.    He had decided to go  home. 

After five miles he stopped on a layby because he wanted to check the cash.  Above all, he wanted to think.  The first time he counted £960.  Then it was £980.  Check again, right first time.  The dead man must have had a good night in the casino. He was probably a worthless gambler using stolen credit cards, laundering his illegal gains. Ben wasn’t to be fooled by the fancy suit and vaguely distinguished appearance.

He looked back on his own life.  He had always played to the rules.  No crook had ever succeeded in bribing him.  There had been times of course, when it would have been easy to falsify a bit of evidence or accept a favour. In that very Casino a few years ago his Inspector had mysteriously aborted a raid only to be able to take a rather expensive holiday a few weeks later.   Plenty of his colleagues had bent the rules to get their man or protect another.  But he had always played it straight. Which was, he thought, why he had retired as a sergeant when less able men had left him far behind. 

And now here he was, sitting in his car, riffling through the wad of notes, wondering why he had even thought of taking them. It’s not that I need the money, he thought.  What with the pension and the job, and Sheila’s business we do well enough. The kids are gone, the mortgage paid, this nice new car, all paid for… why do I need the best part of a K?

There was the sound of a car door slamming. He looked up and saw the car, nose to nose with his own.  A man got out, hurried over and tapped on his window.

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres, by Peter Shilston

I wrote this poem several years ago, after my first visit to the battlefields around Ypres:-  

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres: School Visits

How can they understand a war poem? How can we?
Wars were far away and long ago
And nothing seen on television ever really happened.
Now the woods are full of children
Running through the muddy trenches
Dodging round the water-filled craters
Gawping at, or completely failing to notice
The occasional unexploded shell
And squeaking when their nice new jeans
(Fashionably ragged and torn at the knee)
Are stained with filth in the communications tunnel.
Below the woods the fields are grey with mist
Shrouding the view to the sinister places
The Menin road, and up to Passchendaele,
Behind us, Messines Ridge and Plugstreet. The children
Have been told, but already they’ve forgotten
And soon they’ll be off for hamburger and chips
(They’re looking forward to their succulent Belgian chips)
And leave the trenches and the shattered stumps
The rusty barbed wire and all the iron harvest of war
And arching over all, the chestnut trees
- None more than seventy years old
But sprouting strongly, because well fertilised
By someone who in happier circumstances
Might have married my grandmother
Or yours

A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD

.

Wind, by Maggie Wells

We parked the car on the grass verge and climbed over the stile into the woodland. There was nobody else about, since it was a blusterous sort of day, though not cold.

“Come on!” I said to Sarah, “This is one of my favourite walks!”

 “How long is it going to take?”

“Oh, less than an hour, I should think; then we’ll go to the pub for lunch”

We walked along the path through the trees, chatting about this and that. It was the first time I’d seen Sarah for quite a while. After a bit we turned a corner, and there was the little lake spread out beneath us. I thought it was a glorious view.

“What do we do now?” asked Sarah.

“Walk round the lake and then back to the car. It’s not as far as it looks”.

“Oh”. She sounded very unenthusiastic. “The path isn’t too close to the water, is it? It looks deep!”

“It’s perfectly safe: I’ve been round hundreds of times. What’s the problem?”

“I’m scared of deep water”

“Can’t you swim?”

“I’ve never swum a stroke in my life. It terrifies me: it always has done. And then there was my sister …..” her voice faded out.

“Oh yes, I heard about that somewhere. You had a younger sister who died when she was very small, didn’t you?”

“Yes; she fell into a pool and drowned. It was while we were out on a picnic”

“Where was this?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t much older myself at the time; too young to remember the details; and my parents never talked to me about it, ever. They found it much too distressing”

We started out along the shore, with me doing my best to keep between Sarah and the water whenever the path was wide enough to allow this. But we hadn’t gone very far before Sarah said, “Look, I really don’t want to go any further. You might find I’m being silly, but I don’t like this place at all; it unsettles me. And the wind’s really getting up: I think we might be in for a storm”.

“Fair enough, if that’s how you feel. Let’s just walk as far as those benches, then we’ll go back to the car”                                                                 

   There were two wooden seats near the water’s edge, which looked as though they’d been there for ages. I sat down on one of them to retie my shoelaces. Sarah remained standing, gazing out into the water. Then I heard her say, “My God!”

The wind was really howling by this time, making a fearful racket in the treetops. I wouldn’t have heard Sarah at all if she hadn’t started to shout at the top of her voice. But she wasn’t shouting to me: it was as if she’d forgotten I was there.

“My God, it was here it happened! Here! I can see it in my mind, just as it was!”

You! You! You! Said the wind.

“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t mean to push her in! It was an accident!”

You! You! Said the wind.

“It was mummy and daddy’s fault! They were too far away, and didn’t get back in time to pull her out!”

You! You! You!

“It wasn’t fair to expect me to go in and help her! They know I’m frightened of water!” Sarah collapsed in hysterical tears.

I managed to grab hold of her and led her back through the woods. I helped her into the car without a word, and we sat there for a while until she’d managed to calm down. Then I said, “Look, I really am sorry for bringing you here”

“No”, said Sarah, “You couldn’t possibly have known. I didn’t know myself until we reached that spot, and then it all came back to me. It was my fault for losing self-control like that. I’m sorry. It must have been very embarrassing for you”

There was another silence, then she said, “It was just like I heard voices by the lake there. But it was only the wind, wasn’t it?”

Rest in Peace, by David Bingham

Snow drifted into the trench Colonel Kurtz had ordered his men to excavate. He’d been puzzled by the elongated mound his occupying troops had found in the parkland near the centre of the city,

   ‘Colonel, they knew, with winter coming, they couldn’t hold out against us.’

   The colonel looked down at the creatures which had fought so bravely against him. ‘They’d been under siege for six months. I doubt if they’d have lasted for more than a couple of days anyway.’

   ‘But did they need to go this far?’

   ‘I don’t know, Major. But, in a way, I admire them. They’d rather kill themselves than be subservient.’

   ‘There’s no way we’d have done it!’

   ‘I’m not so sure. Back on earth there’s lots of examples of this kind of thing.’

   The colonel raised his hand and signalled the excavator operators to fill in the trench.

   ‘At least we can tell base the area’s safe for colonisation.’

   ‘No rush, Major; they’ll have to wait until spring before they send settlers here.’

   And in that season of fresh growth a new settlement was established which was intended to rise from the ruins of the old.

   While underneath the surface a species, waking from their winter hibernation, stretched their stiff limbs and began to move upwards from darkness into the light.

The Return, by Hannah

Swasticas on tombstones
Jackboots and a shaved head
Six million feathers
have been blown away
as have the memories of the dead
Demonstrations, manifestations
and cries of hate
freedom of peace for the world
Yet for some it has come too late.
Crosses and flowers
churches filled
joy and despair
of those who were coming
those who were leaving
and those who were never there.
Communism has fallen
Fascism holds
Democracy has risen
yet the dead still lie in their tombs.
The future has not forgiven
the past, the corpses and their wounds.
Auschwitz is covered by grass
the survivors have flown to Israel
and the coffin of racism is opened
nail by nail.