Falluja in Charlbury, first poem in a trilogy 

Fallujah-in-Charlbury

Dazzle-blue dragonflies
A dance of delight
Among yellow flag iris
Soft haze of summer by the waters edge
Arcadian Oxfordshire
Cool waters slipping silently through Cotswold stone

A moment away
In cyberspace
Cavalier copters clash and crash
An unholy mating
Death in the desert

Closer still
Not even a breath away
In a parallel universe
The copters have landed
Safely on our playing close

These young missionaries
Schooled in a games-of- war Arcadea
Chew gum
And slither through the streets

A base they make of our primary school
A place of safety

Big boys, fearsome toys
Uncertain of their liberator status
Settling in

They don't seem to understand
We want our school back for our children
As yet uneducated
Into politicians’ death squads
Into weapons of your war

Charlbury folk
Famous in the County
A dash of colour splattered on the uniformity
Of Oxfordshire's dull Tory blue
March in protest to our school

Fifteen dead today
In this parallel universe
We wanted our school back
For our children's future.