A collector

becomes commander

in his top secret militarised mind

a director

of virtual brigades battalions

and cavalry stallions

I revisit my childhood bedroom

its ceiling trailing plastic aircraft models

from drawing pins and fishing gut

how I made my own sky 

with dioramas of dogfights 

of Hurricane and Stuka

Flying Fortress and Focke Wulf

Spitfire and Messerschmitt

born of glue that got everywhere

until I gave them away to younger cousins

when I thought I ought to have outgrown them

(there were people who were still around then)

decades later I don decals

war paint and sloping armour

having returned to the wheat fields of Prokhorovka

amid the diesel and shell bursts 

of the battle of Kursk

sinking back into those earlier times

my 1970s reimagining

of the Great Patriotic War

the faces of my brave toy soldiers

of indeterminate racial representation

their frozen stances somehow

suggesting action

face each other in lines

their bayonets bent in the crush of packaging

loyal to me in outcomes I decide

never dying

I use part of my disposable income to rekindle

the fantasy campaigns of my childish days

acquiring  more solid diecast Panzers

half-tracks and anti-aircraft guns

in my camouflage under the radar

still at play in a world

in which my government is a supplier

of armaments that kill children