What's The Point What's the point of tanks if you can't have a little fun? Riding on the rusty turret and swiveling the gun. Computer games are all that war's about, Say hungry soldiers grabbing little piggies by the snout. Just a game of hide and seek ,as artillery triangulation is adjusted just a tweak. The suits have listed their criteria, as we twig the stench of rotting and bacteria. You crane ,I crane ,we all crane for news of Truth in Ukraine. Truth is the first to die,some say,but real folk are down the cellars, hiding from the button pushing fellers. Blood and mud never date in Cinema Verite, Loveless missiles often go astray. There's the pus and the stench as insect little humans scurry in their trench. A Kremlin full of criminals and the Pentagon is too far gone for a proper gander. We that give and they that take, all are on the make. Peasants and Profs all attend the wake. The soil can wait for quiet, after this expensive riot. In Summer sunflowers grow. Who is right and who is wrong is not for God to know. Mother's child stamps his feet in the trench beneath the snow. This is for the Motherland,it seems. Those who wait can dream such dreams of summer wind, as if nobody had ever sinned. Death videos put to music, as desperate cameos are enacted. The causes and agendas heavily redacted. History is for tomorrow and yesterday, but never for right now. Soil is frozen against the plough, In Luhansk and Melitopol and Moscow. Brother kills brother at distance, unlike boxers who embrace. Taunting one another in the language of Solzhenitsyn. Resignation amid the shouting and the shredded skin. The brass are in their office,waiting for the word, to release the brothers who crave the homeward turn. The icons tilted in the rubble churches. Splintered oak and silver birches. Scattered rations where once Iron Crosses were won. What's the point if you can't have a little fun ?
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Mitch Mitchell is 66 and lives in Sheffield for the friendly locals. He holds a degree in Japanese, has climbed cliffs since 1973 and is a part-time Buddhist and environmentalist. His mum was a feminist and labour union representative, and his dad a professor of flight engineering.
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