All the world's a war-zone

The flowers dry, the candles burn;

both reach their ends. The world still turns.

The streets are full, the café chat

is about revenge, tit for tat,

air-strikes, mortal wounds, ground combat.

I cannot take in any of that.

I only know she won’t return.

Although each time the doorbell rings

my heart leaps once, instantly sings

then recalls the days before.

She’ll never be back at my door.

The talk is thick with migrants; war;

how exactly to settle the score.

But I can’t relate to those things.

There must be justice, and a stern

reprimand,  offenders must learn

how strong we stand, crime never pays.

The news channels are choked for days

with some or other leader’s speech-haze,

clips gone viral, constant replays,

rehashing the current concern.

I just know that flowers dry rough

that candles aren’t warm enough.

I just know that my room’s gone cold,

my heart is shrivelled and grown old;

she’ll never again cross this threshold

whatever events might unfold.

That’s my truth, the rest’s just stuff.

For all the families - in Nigeria, in Egypt, in India, and in France and elsewhere in the world, who have lost loved ones to terrorism.

In Memoriam

There is no-one to call her name

or keep a vigil, she isn’t me or you
not every life is weighed the same
not all deaths are quite equal value

 

an orphaned, unknown fruit seller

a crushed mass as she passes by
on her usual beat among the lonely squalor
of the crowded roads her days occupy

 

mongrels sniff at what looks like blood

a bunch of grapes in the ditch lies squashed
vultures dip out their solemn hoods
couple days and the whole is washed

 

the city gets back to its usual business

no-one notices one fruit seller less.


Over at dVerse poets are observing a minute of silence to remember and honour the victims of 9/11.  This post is very respectfully dedicated to the many thousand nameless victims of terrorism in my own country, as well as those in the wider world.