canaries in the coalmine

canaries in a coalmine singing to the last
or fodder for the cannonades’ devastating blast
led to the well and made to drink the water
taken meekly away like lambs to the slaughter

sacrificial billy-goats straining at our ropes
confronted by gunfire and running out of hope
fools on the front line pretend heroes in the battle
falling like ninepins or captured like cattle

we’re canaries in the coal mine dying to save the rest
not worth much and expendable squared-up to the test
to be poisoned by firestorms hoist by the petards
of three-piece-suit generals safe by a hundred yards

nothing ever changes and we still give it all what-for
while the rich and fat and lazy ones send all of us to war

© BH, 2026

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Seems old-fashioned, now, the canary in a coal mine imagery, but there’s still lots of usage, if you Google the phrase, to the point of cliché, even.

And this is a war poem…

And, of course, warfare is modernised now, with an echo of the old ways in the new. As ever, the prosecutors of war don’t fight and the combatants get younger.

But more so, the dead and the dying, in combat and beyond, they are a symptom of our malaise. These casualties, the collateral damage, of bellicide, genocide – all the names we invent for organised killing – they are our canaries. One by one, cohort by cohort, they die or linger, sickening, and demonstrate the presence of how we poison the world.

The rest you need to work on for yourselves.