Gulf Turkish Holiday Heritage

“To return at last from Turkey
with my memories safely stored
between thin clear plastic pages.”

This is all I save from Turkey
where youth beauty are service bled
lifeblood devalues faster than wages.

Its January 1991 Saddam Hussein
is finally getting his ass kicked; during
the war I remained in Istanbul but

a holiday toward the scud threatened
border was too cheap to refuse; strange
watching fearful flee direction opposite

alive adrenaline rush alive dead chickens
would give warning gas was about to;
claim take our civilian collateral damage

lives; but as written record reads scuds
were never fired into National Turkish Airspace? ;
and Andrew died of virus lung infection

a few years later caught pumping gas
at a London petrol station during cold winter;
weather we had but in brief in Istanbul.

Copyright © Terence George Craddock
Quotation from the poem ‘Turkish Heritage’.

poem by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!