A Rifleman in Winter

Corporal Leo Bunin’s breath came out in a cloud in the ice cold air of the Russian winter. He had to constantly move his fingers, the tips of which were not covered by his woollen gloves, incase the skin froze on the metal of his German rifle. It was a fine rifle, one he had found under a body on the decimated outskirts of Stalingrad next to the enormous grain silo. The craftsmanship of the rifle was impressive; it’s wooden stock smooth and polished, the metal seamless. He had fired it three times. He hadn’t hit anything that he had intended to, but Leo was aware of his own capabilities and regarded this as a failure of his own skill as a marksman, rather than the quality of the tool he was using. And it was a tool. If he thought of it as a tool, it made it easier to fire the thing, than if he believed it to be the weapon it was. On the three occasions he had pulled the trigger, a wave of relief passed over him when he missed.

But now he was lining up to shoot the rifle for a fourth time. He was lying on the embankment of a ditch, his left eye closed as he lined the shot, his breathing steadying as he tried to keep still. If it wasn’t for the dreadful cold, it would have been easier to stop his shaking, but his clothes were inadequate to stop it permeating through.
In a copse of trees his target moved. A dear, startled already, by who knows what, was ready to sprint away. He had seconds to shoot before the moment was too late. He squeezed the trigger. A figure dropped from a tree but too late the dear had sprung away deeper into the thick of trees. His bullet must have wildly missed as the man was stood exactly where the dear had been.

“You Russian’s, you know how to cope with the cold. In Germany we don’t get the winters like this. It is hell.” Said Heiko. Leo laughed and bit into the roasted meat. Actual meat! Their combined thinking and organisation had given them a proper meal, and a shelter to keep warm in. In the silence of eating, a Stuka could be heard diving, even from this distance.
“I hate that sound.” Said Heiko. “It scares the hell out of me.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to do. The only thing I’m scared of is everything” he bit into the meat. After a moment he paused in his chewing. “It’s your plane though. Why are you scared?”
“It’s not my plane.”
“It is. German’s built it. You are German.”
“I can just about say I own this watch. But when I am shot, it won’t be my watch. It will be whoever ransacks my corpse. I didn’t make it. Someone who made this has a little bit of ownership in it. But does it matter if he’s German of Russian?”
“If he was Russian it would be worthless! Stuff we make always falls apart!” He laughed and Heiko laughed to. Heiko relaxed warm and full. The fire blazed briefly, throwing sparks into the air like a miniature volcano.
“But that plane. I didn’t make it. I haven’t flown it. I haven’t even seen it.” He craved a cigarette. His full belly would be better for it, he knew. “How do I know who it belongs to? German yes, but not my Germany. Probably never again.”

Cumbria

I went to a boy’s school in Cumbria
It was lovely a place as could be,
Except for the school
With it’s misogynistic rule,
The forced runs, it’s food
And no heating.

I loved the fells and the becks,
And the views that stretch on forever,
Over hill and dale, midst summer or gale
It is beauty irrespective of weather.

But the boys I never did like,
Which inevitably led to many a fight,
So tucked in my room
I’d read through the gloom,
Till I loved thought over fought
beauty over cruelty,
and that which appeared to me true.

So fight if you like,
Mock and make light,
Of everything you see or hear,
But that which is dear
Is a self without fear
Forthright, loving, and kind.

Her Majesty’s Secret Service

‘Listen Agent 0001 your Majesty, we need you for a top secret mission for Queen and country’ said M. Agent 0001 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II took the Marlboro red cigarette, her fiftieth of the day, out of her mouth and flicked it. The cigarette bounced off M’s forehead, spun through the air, out the open window and into the pram of a passing peasant’s baby.
‘M, I’m ready to do my duty for myself and my country.’ Said Her Majesty as she poured herself a double scotch with extra scotch, and topped it up with meths.
‘Shouldn’t you lay off the hard stuff agent 0001? It is six thirty in the morning” said M with concern.
‘Listen M,’ said the Queen angrily, ‘my life, my country, so we’re playing by my rules’ said the Queen as she let off an enormous postern blast of gas. ‘Sorry, I had eggs this morning’ said the Queen.
‘Very well Your Majesty Agent 0001 Queen Elizabeth II, let’s get down to brass tacks’ said M sternly. ‘We need you for a search and destroy mission.’ The Queen looked up from her copy of Private Eye.
‘Is it that bastard Murdoch? Is he using his media mogul power to influence the world into all out nuclear war where he will hide in his secret lair and then return when it’s all over to start a new world order?’
‘Not quite Agent 0001’ said M, ‘it’s far, far worse than that.’

Her Maj slipped her final throwing knife into her hair as a hair pin. Prince Philip was busy gutting a rabbit.
‘Phil, it’s the big one’ she said seriously.
‘Good luck. May the force be with you’ said Prince Philip in his high falsetto voice.
‘I do this for God and King Harry’ said Queenie as she back flipped out the kitchen door, down the corridor, up a flight of stairs, through the state dining room, along another corridor, right, down another corridor, right again, down a flight of stairs, along another corridor, left, more corridor, past the guards, out the front door over a corgi and somersaulted into her souped up Range Rover, through the sun roof.
‘Let’s roll, Fido’ said Agent 0001 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
‘Woof’ barked the corgi. The air was palpably stuck with seriousness. They both new that today was the day Barrack Obama would die for his evil schemes.

In his office M looked out the window. His eyes were staring at nothing as he thought of the danger the Queen was putting herself into. ‘What a woman’ he thought to himself appreciatively. Osama Bin Laden would soon be a bloody smear on his Welsh cave hideout and the world would be a safer place. Osama Bin Laden, after all this time would finally pay for his crimes.
Suddenly panic gripped him Something wasn’t right. Something deeply, deeply, worryingly, staggeringly, incredibly, amazingly wrong was nagging at his attention. Then it hit him. He lurched from his man size baby high chair and fell on the florr. Picking himself up, he rushed to his desk and started throwing papers all over the place as he looked for the secret mission note from Miss Moneypenny’s replacement.
Eventually he found the note, covered in her familiar green crayon.

Kill obama

My God, thought M. Queenie, Britain’s top secret agent, was going to kill the leader of the free world. He ran through to his receptionist’s room.
‘What have you done?!’ screamed M at his receptionist. Jade Goody looked up vacantly with a great big stupid smile on her fat face.
‘Watcha, how’s it going M? Eh? Like M & M’s your name is but only a half one like low fat M & M’s or something – ‘
‘You’ve gone and told the Queen to kill the wrong person! It was supposed to say Osama Bin Laden. You’ve written Obama you intellectual cripple!’ M was fuming. Damn these Back To Work Schemes. How he wished Miss Moneypenny was here with her style, charisma, sexiness, and above all, an IQ rating bigger than her shoe size.
‘You’re a fucking idiot, Jade Goody’ said M and left her to look at the pictures in her copy of The Beano.

Ode to an end to Love

She had big boobs, it’s true,
I loved them,
And that’s why I rue
The day she left,
With her marvellous chest
To live with some guy
From Gloucester.

Rachel

Rachel

Rachel, you ain’t got no knees
It’s sad I know but please,
Don’t worry ‘bout having them gone
You sold them, you know that it’s wrong

Oh Rachel you said some stupid things
As you sold that Russian your limbs,
You said you weren’t going to miss ‘em
My friend, she just wouldn’t listen, as we sang

CHORUS

Rachel you ain’t got no knees
Rachel, why did you lease,
Your left leg to a muslim
Your right arm to a Jew,
The Catholic’s an appendix
And the Buddhist’s your poo?
Rachel, Rachel,
your two limbs too few!

Oh kids don’t hawk out your joints
To ASDA for nectar points,
Don’t swap them for cider
Or sell them for a fiver

Or you’ll be like Rachel with two limbs too few!

Work

They say time heals all: but tonight
The ticking clock hails nothing new,
But endless seconds echoed away 'till five o'clock;
The first timid trace of dawns' dim light.

The air is thick. It doesn't move, but hangs,
just as it does in the light. Theres no difference then
between night and day, no cut off point,
no spiritual sensation of a big bang

To mark something changed. Tomorrow,
The working day will be the same, the coffee,
Idle chatter with the clerk at her desk:
Days marked by an ever deepening sorrow.

Coolio

Oh Lord, save me from everything iniquitous,

Oh Lord, save me from myself

Save me from Tuesday night’s and sat on the edge of the bed

Staring with existential dread,

Save me from holiday’s
Save me from nothing to do
Save me from TV, coffee, tea & death
Save me from me

Save me from pencil death staring at the whiteboard of eternity
As pencil necked men pencil in pointlessness on the eyelid’s of
Monday morning, face fucked from here to Friday on the back
Of productivity & pro-activity & performance, Oh Lord! Save
Them for they do not know, oh Lord! Save them for they do not see
The words that haunt them are the words that
Blind them, the words that blind them
Are the words of work that blinds and
Haunts them, on Tuesday’s of Huddles at three PM
When the soul is stretched thin over coals
Of scores racked up & spat out & sucked up
Into the vacuum of the Trial of the Castle of
Postmen going postal, of old age and pension
Slips, collected and dejected marching out of
Post offices, unwanted & unloved and hated above &
Below and holed
just there.