Frankie Quinn with a poem from his expansive body of work.
Who Remembers Them?
The soldiers hide behind curtains laced stoned faced.
Where sun doesn’t shine. Their mind all frayed
The faces lined, tangled with barbed wire and strife,
Where was their life but hiding under ditches?
While others slept in comfortable style
They waited for the Saracen’s roar, creamery cans
Filled to brim, not with milk but benzine mix.
No one wants to embrace their troubled mind.
♞♜♝
It’s now seen as the past. But not with them
They are still in that prison den with the din of
Batton cracks on necks the strip search to
Invade your personal space your hidden,
Private place no longer exists taken by mirrors and nips.
The clips that bounce around your feet brass shells
Do not penetrate these cells locked behind steel doors.
As devils march on polished floors.
♞♜♝
The roars, the scars and crippling sores, they heal.
But the unravelling mind in its turmoil still he hears the shots.
That skimmed past his ear and ended in a comrade’s
Head, foreigners lead pierced, he’s dead.
So, when he walks alone.
Still and stout be in no doubt within him a screaming pain,
how can he accept the rules of society’s tools to make you obey?
And conform to the norm. Move on they say well take one day.
Inside his head he wishes was filled with lead, with comrades dead.
♞♜♝
So, as you criticize the soldier now alone,
peering from a window.
With no flowers but stone.
Remember once he was ours, to call upon.
For inner strength,
to protect you all from them kicking in doors.
The marauder, the squaddies who cracked his head, he stood
♞♜♝
Strong when needed to,
now as he passes you barely remembered
Sacrificed his life,
it was never his but yours
his choices were never made.
To run he stood to fight the Hun
but destabilised his mind with SLR’s and lights
at night they interrogate his dreams,
he screams.
No one there to hear his call clutching head, void of lead, tears instead.
♞♜♝
Who now hears his call for help, no one dears embrace his pain?
In case it starts all over again.
It wasn’t him the bin lids loud din.
But the enemy at your door.
Between you and death’s gate he stood
tall and proud and shouted loud No
we will stand on our land and fight for what is right.
Our sovereign right to wear the green to be proud of Connolly’s men.
To stand beside Clarke and the likes.
The soft spoken Granda with child on his knee,
never smiles or laughs you see.
But do you ever remember Who stood between you and them,
then rotted in that prison den?
⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.
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