Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started

FREEZE TIME

Wish that I could’ve frozen time

Halted it completely in its tracks

Made it that the bells wouldn’t chime

That you wouldn’t fade to black

Wish I could’ve wrapped you

And your fragile little frame,

Stooped in humble service

Like a perpetual prayer,

up in cotton wool

In bubble wrap

In my arms

Breathe fresh life

Into your lungs

But cancer had set its trap

Aggressively it had struck

And your body slowly wasted away

To mere skin & bone

As if you were made to atone

For some ancient sin

You’d buried deep within

A thought I scarce can entertain

For it would stain

Your memory

Your legacy

You were too pure

Too gentle

For this earth

Hope you find the peace

You’re looking for

To make your sacrifices

Worth.

 

Wish that I could freeze time

Halt it completely in its tracks

Get a marker & draw a line,

Across which you cannot pass

For fear that you might get older

Grow up too soon

Lose your childlike innocence

For you’re too young to shoulder

Such burdens.

If that makes any sense.

Put together your very own

Wardrobe to Narnia

Where you’ll never grow old

Or succumb to disease

Where you’ll never be told

What to do

Or have to appease

You’ll sit on the throne

Guided by the great lion

And rule your kingdom

With kindness and compassion

Love and wisdom

Strength & dignity

For the whole of your life

 

 

 

 

 

 

SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX

Seven hundred and ninety-six

Barely born, young innocent souls

Never given a chance at life

Born out of wedlock,

Born out of luck

Considered nothing more than livestock

To be buried ‘neath sewerage; bricks & muck

By the cornerstone & bedrock

Of Ireland, the Catholic Church, stuck

Still in the dark ages

Who heaped shame upon unmarried mothers then

For “living in sin” as they say

Mothers

‘Give up your baby

Pay your penance in the laundries’

Never told of their fate

Treated them as dirty whores

Social lepers;

Religious outcasts

Thrown out of the Kingdom

Children

Malnourished; neglected

Emaciated & rejected

By the church and state

Complicit with them

Paying money to the run the institutions

Wash their hands

And clean the slate

Society complicit with them

By watching on;

Allowing it to happen

Indifferent to the massacre

Going on behind closed walls

Out of sight, out mind

 

Their voices now crying out

From beneath the grave

The echoes of which

Now reverberate loudly

Through the once locked up corridors

Of Ireland’s minds

Clearing the closets of all the skeletons

Lifting up the bulging dusty carpets

Under which years of dirty secrets lie

 

Written by Ken Hume

March 2017

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑