A to Z 2025 – Work, War

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Work

If you have been following my A to Z this year, you will know that I have covered a fair few of the jobs I have done (I like to say that I have forgotten more jobs than most people have had), but what of the nature of work and working? I suppose that most of my jobs have fallen either into physical work like signwriting and cheffing, or else desk jobs such as administration/management and writing, but there are a few other classifications like teaching, call-centre work and cinema projectionist. Nowadays, as most people have caught up to me in the retrain every decade mode, at interview, it’s all about transferrable skills and the dreaded “describe a situation where you…”. For example, mixing paint and indeed painting a wall with a brush, require much the same sensitive touch as making a roux-based sauce and a fluency with spreadsheets is required in running a restaurant, calculating quantities of steel required in a building project or keeping track of one’s poetry output – who it was written for and where it has been published. As I have got older, my work has revolved more and more around the computer above – and just to think that when I was at school, there were only 3 (Mainframe)computers in the whole of Oxford and PC’s and Laptops were not even a twinkle in somebody’s eye – who knew where it would end up – not me!

War

As a teenager, with history lessons at school, and my mother’s war stories, whilst she still told them, I gradually became aware of the Second World War which finished just 10 years before I was born, of the First world War which my Grandad had been in and of various far distant conflicts going on around the world, the Suez Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam. And yet, there was a sense that World Wars at least were safely in the past, as Dylan said – we were friends with the Germans now, the world order was dedicated to peace and stability, the Rule of Law and the fruit of that stability was the Global Village. The current crop of authoritarian dictators, some, like Putin, desperately trying to turn the clock back to the grim days (as others see them) of the Cold War when Russia was Great, and the man he helped to power who also wants to Make America Great Again, despite the fact that it already was great my most measures and considered so by many people – those men and other dictators of their ilk, have succeeded in shattering the stability and raised the threat level in ways we can hardly comprehend.
Neither, many would say, does Trump, and whilst his name will likely be a byword for infamy, one day, things are likely to get worse before they get better. So far from the cosy certainties that I grow up with, what sort of future is being handed to my grandchildren, I cannot say…

Words

At 70, I feel I am a little too old and slightly broken, to become an activist carrying banners on the street, but if you have a computer and access to the internet, you have a voice and you can research and learn, search for truths, write – essays, emails, op-eds, and poems, then deploy them for the things that matter to you – wage war 0r at least counter-insurgency with words, for democracy, the environment, the downtrodden – and lest you think your voice won’t be heard or matter, an ocean is made up of drops of water and every drop counts towards the main…

Here are two of my poems, they are about America, the first written before Trump’s second election, the second afterwards, and in part, responding to the first…

America (I Would Like to Visit You)

America I would like to visit you but
I have a fear of repeatedly feeling
déjà vu having seen
your treasures and tragedies
over and over
on big screens and small
I have come to absorb
through books and films
and blogs – those love-children
of Letter From America
some understanding of your ways.

It is only my personal view
others see you quite differently
from The Land of Opportunity
to The Great Satan.
I also, of course,
know real Americans
both in the flesh
and in the virtual world
and even have relatives
a whole branch of the family.
Since my grandfather’s brother
emigrated before the First World War
he and his descendants
have demonstrated the positives
the opportunity to make good
– it might have been less opportune
if he had not been white.

Now I understand the wealth
of America could not have been so great
without the dispossession
of the previous occupants
or the relocation of millions
of slaves who
even after emancipation
worked a different kind of bondage
in the factories of Chicago.

I cannot preach
us British have no right…
just this week I read a supplement
of The [Manchester] Guardian
on how Manchester’s cotton wealth
was the fruit of slavery
just at one remove
and the Guardian
famously liberal
did little to recognise
even its own failure to comment
until now.

America
so much is squeezed
into your great cities
each pressure-cooking
a distinct language
which is so much more
than mere accent
but in between
the vast wildernesses
still exist free of graffiti
the poor of the cities
not banned
but excluded from access
nevertheless
by lacking the means
to get there

And so
America
you are a land of opposites
of natural beauty and urban ugliness
of obscene wealth and unforgivable poverty
of liberal tolerance and extreme hatred.
Maybe this is true of all countries
but America – You proclaimed yourself
to be the Great and the Good
to be the World’s Policeman
but all your policemen
carry guns
and so therefore do the bad guys
and the poor
and the rich
by inalienable right.

America
Dorothy has
pulled back the curtain
and the little man revealed
does not match up to the rhetoric
or the dream.

But still I would like to visit you
America…

Written in response to “America [superstorm]”
by Kathleen Graber from her collection – The River Twice

America (Krisis*: at the Crossroads)

America I would still like to visit you
perhaps even more urgently
– the rough beast slouched
towards Bethlehem now born
– a second coming the world
thought impossible
now come to pass
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

How long before those Great Lakes
are poisoned by polluters
set free to do their dirty work
and national parks still safe
from the graffiti of the poor
but not from the mineral mining
gutting of once again empowered rich
cost corner-cutting pipelines
fracture and spill their black gold
on sacred reservations and beyond.

To appease his base your President
has pulled your role as policeman
to the world citing the cost
but alongside military might
your soft power saved lives
now already doomed as
vaccinations, retro-virals
and simply food are withdrawn
allies against oppression abandoned
in favour of the oppressors
and that is without the chaos
of world markets disarrayed
the world order disrupted
by a thoughtless
human hand grenade.

We British cannot talk
– we also had a Prime Minister
unelected, full of hubris, who
made leader by her party
with no electoral mandate
fancied herself a disruptor
and lasted less time than a lettuce
but whose damage lives on

– small fry compared to POTUS
whose power, mandated, he claims
has already hurt the whole world
in ways no magic reset can reverse
and in truth, his mandate was
less than half of “We the people…”
his vandals slashing government
to smash the laws that hold them back
from moving money – poor to rich
once more…

The “Land of Opportunity” that
favoured my grandfather’s brother
and many another immigrant
now demonises the souls who
would make their way too
to share the possibilities
of a bright future for their families
even as the undocumented
labour that oils the wheels
of the American economy
– fentanyl and the war on drugs
a fig leaf to the injustice
of forced repatriation of those
already embedded in America
their dreams and families shattered
by the spurious scourge of
anti-immigrant sentiment
pitting the poor
against the poorer still.

So America I would still like to visit you
but I am not sure you would let me in
with my opinions here on record
– sewn into the worldwide web
where creepy billionaires now
rule the roost and spread the lies
that fooled America’s poor
into electing their nemesis
by inflaming the emotion of their
abandoned sensibilities with
false promises wrapped up in fake news
– how long before you see the truth
and can Americans, as they have before
revolt against the white minority
who would install Gilead
the billionaires bent on plunder
the bigoted descendants of
the slave-owning South.

And if you, the people of America
find your voice and strength again
quell the krisis
reassert the values that had
America support the world order
the rule of law, the equality of man
then perhaps I will yet
get to visit America…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

* Krisis, a Greek word meaning a pivotal decision point…