Poetry

Jesus. Being at university all week I haven't seen the TV news or lifted a newspaper. Now I'm at home and looking at the footage of Bush and Blair's little gang bombing the shit out of Baghdad. And I'm a cynical bitch and I don't usually react to stuff on the news (it seems to be a side-effect of growing up during the so-called Troubles here: not for everyone but for some) but I keep thinking about the Neil Gaiman story "Ramadan" and almost crying.

My contribution to the war poems that are appearing in these journals:

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour.

'Poor young chap,' I'd say-'
I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die - - in bed.

- Siegfried Sassoon

Sigh. There'll be more spamming and icons later, but I'm off to watch the news update now...

Kids' book...

Passage from Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, proving that I see Buffy (and particularly Spike and redemption) everywhere. The book's about a cat who's made intelligent via magic and joins up with a group of rats to scam humans. The cat, Maurice, starts out as a bastard who's using the rats, but begins to develop a conscience. About halfway through he admits he ate one of the rats' friends...

( Maurice's face moved. It tried various expressions one after another. Then he said... )

Yes, I am officially insane.