John Smith
Imaginary Homelands
3 min readMar 22, 2021

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This empty war, it drives my thought, my life,
My mind is drawn to it all day and night.
I hate the way it shatters reasoning,
It tempts soldiers to fight, words poisoning.

From o’er the seas and hills, it breaks all bounds,
It devastates cities and our towns.
Must humankind be instruments of war?
A symphony of song clashing in gore!

It consumes my heart, my house, my home,
I step onward, forever forced to roam.
My past is coughing and suffocating,
The heat and haze like fog, fumigating.

Fighting against the tide, battling,
Moving together in stride.
As a team, we were one
Until the battle will be won.

Our allies are far behind,
Awake from a state of war.
Surrounded and flanked,
Nowhere left, but to push forward.

My life struggles between battle and bloodshed,
Silence, screams and sorrow.
It never shows any mercy,
I pause, printing their images in my memory.

I’m so nervous and so confused,
Friends and foes dying and bruised,
My hands have no strength left to fight,
I wait, wait for the daylight.

I’m done waiting,
I’m done praying,
I’m done fighting,
Why have I been made to be so cruel?

I think to run and hide,
But the weeping dead haunt my sleep.
Visions of their bodies piled by the wayside,
Their faint memories have come to creep.

Their families from across the world,
Will they mourn or will they rage?
Releasing their emotions, unfurled
Our war delivers a new world, a new age.

Clashing united against a common enemy,
Or divided we fall, labour and strive.
We must push desperately,
Look forward to each tomorrow.

I find myself between past, present and future,
How could I face the past?
Looking at the future means nothing,
The present is what changes everything.

But I wonder if the war passed us over,
I would have been a farmer,
Ploughing wheat would take my days
Not slicing the gaps of armour.

What if my family had lingered,
Their faces I could have seen once more.
But what could I have done without war?
I would have returned home.

I gaze towards the break of day,
My heart is cleared of all dismay.
I grieved their mournful deaths,
Now I savour each passing breath.

In the sky, the heavens,
The angels are laughing.
Will I go to heaven or hell,
It seems that only time can tell.

My mind is clearer now,
With time my miseries fade,
Drawing each breath with pride
Finally, my grief subsides.

But, there is still far to go,
Faraway, my homeland, my town,
Only ashes remain,
Blackened and charred from fire and stone.

I want to go back home,
For that is where my heart lies.
From the bottom of the sea,
I cannot reach this prize.

The war is over, yet it never ends,
The haunting of my hopes,
The loss of my friends,
I yearn to return it to what it once was.

So I walk with my head held high,
On the path, my mind leads me,
Forward I still must roam,
But one day I shall return home.

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Imaginary Homelands
Imaginary Homelands

Published in Imaginary Homelands

Work produced by Australian high school students after studying the short stories of Salman Rushdie

John Smith
John Smith