Remains

• Remains


  Split second desicions are perminant and last forever
• on another occasion


  Showing it has been repeated, not first occasion
• Legs it up the road

  Informal language
• Probably armed possibly not


  Unsure as to what is going on, panic
• Well myself and somebody else and somebody else

  Share blame and responsibility, doesn’t feel alone in his guilt
• Enjambment


  Continuation, image is constant
• Sort of inside out


  Brutal imagery
• One of my mates goes by

  Informal, sounds relaxed, Truman normailised
• tosses his guts back into his body

  nonchalant and casual
• End of story, except not really

  Caesura, pause for effect
• His blood-shadow


  Follows him like a shadow
• Week after week


  Repetitive nature
• But I blink


  Shift to mental effect
• Sleep, and he’s probably armed, possibly not


  Doubt if they were a threat
• Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds


  Power of memory
• And the drink and drugs won’t flush him out


  Perminant guilt, try’s to cure PTSD
• Dug in behind enemy lines

  Mind is the enemy
• His bloody life in my bloody hands


  Can’t rid himself of the guilt

  felt entirely to blame
• All stanzas have four lines except final stanza which has two lines, reflects that his suffering isn’t over
• Key themes


  • guilt
  • horrors of war
  • power of memory
  • PTSD
  • inescapable suffering
• Comparison poems


  • war photographer
  • exposure
  • poppies
  • the emigree