when the US was fighting wars in the 60s people stood up for peace. Not enough people in the west remember what if feels like when a bomb falls on your hourse, or your fiance dies in a trench.
Peace isn’t a clear need because we’ve all grown up assuming it.
I agree people are far too comfortable now - me included! I also think the bombardment of media streams (24/7) news channels has made people more indifferent.
It was interesting growing up over here. My granny lived in west Belfast during the height of the troubles. My daddy begged and pleaded with her to come back with him to Scotland as he worried about her constantly - but she wouldn’t. So we had to make visits there a few times a year. In the 90s it was still a very dangerous place. (It’s not now, I love the city!)
But it gives you a slightly different perspective on things, I guess.
My reference is visiting a friend who grew up in Sarajevo. She pointed out things like where the snipers where, where she had to go to get water, spending nights in the basement…
I’ve met people who carry memories like that... the kind that glaze the eyes and pull a person backward into a moment no one should ever have lived. Stories that don’t come from books or screens, but from someone standing right beside you, speaking in a voice that’s half‑here and half‑somewhere burning.
Those kinds of memories change the air around a person.
They stay in the room long after the words stop.
Reading your piece, and reading Charles’s reflection, reminds me how close those scars really are... how war doesn’t just happen “over there,” but inside the people who survived it, carrying whole lifetimes of smoke behind their ribs.
Your compassion here matters.
Your writing makes space for the weight of what people have lived through, even when the world tries to look away.
And I’ll admit... your comment stirred something in me. My eyes leaked a little writing this, the way they do when a memory brushes past too close. Because when a story hits like that, I cared. I carried the weight of someone else’s truth, the kind that never quite leaves you. The memory of a man who once trusted me with the worst moment of his life... and the compassion it took not to expose his trauma ... rose up again while reading. Your writing has a way of waking the quiet things we thought we’d tucked away.
I caught his latest just now… discussing renovations and noise complaints, before slotting in the name of a “war hero” my jaw is always on the floor. I can’t believe he is real but I know terrifyingly, that he is. The mind boggles
Man… the things that come out of your mind. You take a bomb and give it a voice, a pulse, a nervous first‑date swagger... and suddenly the whole machinery of destruction becomes painfully human. Horrifying, yes, but strangely intimate. You show how power seduces, how violence gets dressed up in myth, how history polishes its weapons until they shine like trophies.
What struck me most wasn’t the shock... it was the loneliness humming underneath it.
This loud, chaotic, destructive narrator who still aches for connection, even though everything about him was built to harm. A twisted heart beating inside a shell meant only to fall.
This is darkly humorous, sharp as a spark in the Texas Panhandles dry grass... the kind of spark that remembers last summer, when the land was so thirsty even the cattle had nothing left to stand on, when the wind carried fire farther than hope and whole stretches of beef country burned down to nothing but ribs of fence line and the ghost of “where’s the beef” drifting over the ash. That sun‑bleached, dust‑bitten kind of danger… you captured that same energy.
In times like these, when the language of force feels too casual in the mouths of those in charge, your work feels like a needed mirror... one that refuses to look away.
Drop verses, not bombs!
If only our politicians thought the same way, Saint! If only…
when the US was fighting wars in the 60s people stood up for peace. Not enough people in the west remember what if feels like when a bomb falls on your hourse, or your fiance dies in a trench.
Peace isn’t a clear need because we’ve all grown up assuming it.
I agree people are far too comfortable now - me included! I also think the bombardment of media streams (24/7) news channels has made people more indifferent.
It was interesting growing up over here. My granny lived in west Belfast during the height of the troubles. My daddy begged and pleaded with her to come back with him to Scotland as he worried about her constantly - but she wouldn’t. So we had to make visits there a few times a year. In the 90s it was still a very dangerous place. (It’s not now, I love the city!)
But it gives you a slightly different perspective on things, I guess.
My reference is visiting a friend who grew up in Sarajevo. She pointed out things like where the snipers where, where she had to go to get water, spending nights in the basement…
That hits different that seeing it on TV.
Bless her. I cannot even begin to imagine.
You don’t have to 🫀
I’ve met people who carry memories like that... the kind that glaze the eyes and pull a person backward into a moment no one should ever have lived. Stories that don’t come from books or screens, but from someone standing right beside you, speaking in a voice that’s half‑here and half‑somewhere burning.
Those kinds of memories change the air around a person.
They stay in the room long after the words stop.
Reading your piece, and reading Charles’s reflection, reminds me how close those scars really are... how war doesn’t just happen “over there,” but inside the people who survived it, carrying whole lifetimes of smoke behind their ribs.
Your compassion here matters.
Your writing makes space for the weight of what people have lived through, even when the world tries to look away.
And I’ll admit... your comment stirred something in me. My eyes leaked a little writing this, the way they do when a memory brushes past too close. Because when a story hits like that, I cared. I carried the weight of someone else’s truth, the kind that never quite leaves you. The memory of a man who once trusted me with the worst moment of his life... and the compassion it took not to expose his trauma ... rose up again while reading. Your writing has a way of waking the quiet things we thought we’d tucked away.
You know I love your writing.
I equally hate the state of this world, and especially the cheeze whiz in my nation's capital.
What an absolute disaster.
Me too. Couple of megalomaniacs Mandy.
Dangerous times 😔
I know this fucker! 🙌🤗
I love how this slides from darkly funny into deeply unsettling without ever breaking voice.
Also, the tonal control here is wild... I was laughing and then suddenly not. Gorgeous.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
So real. So true.
No lies told.
Goddamnit. You’ve done it again, shone your brilliance as bright as the blast from a bomb.
You’re too kind Mrs Green - thank you love
Damn. Just damn.
We've all met this motherfucker a time or two, and I've never seen such a well done representation, so dark so accurate 🖤🐦⬛
Thank you love 🖤
this line explodes without remorse: “Wanna create cute little terrorists together?”
Thank you Chris, this was written during yet another feeble speech by our PM
it has universal appeal. across the pond a certain person that will not be named thinks that toilette tweets suffice for wartime proclamations.
I caught his latest just now… discussing renovations and noise complaints, before slotting in the name of a “war hero” my jaw is always on the floor. I can’t believe he is real but I know terrifyingly, that he is. The mind boggles
this often feels a prelude to one of your short stories. one that can only be seen in hindsight.
I think if I wrote what I really wanted to about the orange pestilence… I’d be cancelled right quick 🤣
no possible way your voice could be cancelled or silenced.
Dear Anomie,
Man… the things that come out of your mind. You take a bomb and give it a voice, a pulse, a nervous first‑date swagger... and suddenly the whole machinery of destruction becomes painfully human. Horrifying, yes, but strangely intimate. You show how power seduces, how violence gets dressed up in myth, how history polishes its weapons until they shine like trophies.
What struck me most wasn’t the shock... it was the loneliness humming underneath it.
This loud, chaotic, destructive narrator who still aches for connection, even though everything about him was built to harm. A twisted heart beating inside a shell meant only to fall.
This is darkly humorous, sharp as a spark in the Texas Panhandles dry grass... the kind of spark that remembers last summer, when the land was so thirsty even the cattle had nothing left to stand on, when the wind carried fire farther than hope and whole stretches of beef country burned down to nothing but ribs of fence line and the ghost of “where’s the beef” drifting over the ash. That sun‑bleached, dust‑bitten kind of danger… you captured that same energy.
In times like these, when the language of force feels too casual in the mouths of those in charge, your work feels like a needed mirror... one that refuses to look away.
Steve