Day 28 Mending the Broken Places

28th Oct 2019

Hello friends. It is Monday and the start of a new week. The news these last few days of the death of thirty nine people found in a refrigerated truck has really made people think. 
Unfortunately, it's happening all the time . One wonders where they might have ended up . In the slave trade maybe? Yes, it goes on. The money they borrow to get themselves here, they then have to pay back, which they are rarely able to do. 
I can't say I know what the answer is but I would like to think that they would be treated with dignity and respect as we all deserve being everyone of us part of the human race. 

Anyway, today is Day 28 of the ongoing challenge, OctPoWriMo 2019.

Only three more posts for this. 
I will make it.
I will make it.
I will make it.





From Broken Places

Why risk their lives to get here?
Last distressed words, by text,
"My trip to a  foreign land has failed"
"I am dying, I can't breathe!"
"I am suffocating!"

Thirty one men, eight women,
Dead. God be with them.
A pregnant wife and son left behind,
Now grieve.
Many families innocent victims.

Paid to smugglers by one family,
Thirty thousand pounds,
Borrowed with  hope in a future,
Turned into nightmare.
Money laundering.

They escape from broken places,
Hide in trucks, holding onto dreams
Of a better life, of working,
Of sending money back home.
Willing to take the chance.

A mass fatality - without respect
Without dignity,
Trafficking of people
How many more will die by
drowning at sea or in refrigerated trucks?

How many more...

Woman Caught In Adultery

  I wrote this poem last year and have performed it a few times getting great feedback:

   

Woman Caught in Adultery

They drag me through rugged streets,

Men’s hands grip my arms,

Large fingers press into flesh –pale ,  bare

Their words wild, aggressive, accusing,  

Echo, in the chamber of my brain

While he is free,

I am going to die, Yet, I fear not the dying,

But the pain, how will I bear the pain.

Terror travels with blood through my veins

And he is free,

They throw me down, in the dirt, In front of a man,

My nose forced into the rough ground.

My Foetal shape makes no attempt to rise

The raging rogues  roar, ”she has to die , it is the law”

They get ready, reach for large stones,

 But he is free.

While the one man  sits  still,

Ponders, writes in the dust

Then,  lifts his head,

“ Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone”

His words fall like seeds into my aching heart.

Silence,

One by one rocks thud into the earth. The mob, heads bent, Leave.

Left alone with Him,- I dare to raise myself up

His eyes encounter mine, His look warm , accepting,

He Knows me, all there is.

And me, I know that I,

I am free.