Tag Archives

murder

HELTER-SKELTER

The bends are tight and frequent down the pass.
I can only glimpse the autumn colours
in the vertiginous valleys below.
There are reds and golds, you tell me, even
lime yellows – still deep and rich though mist falls.

Before the narrow track to the quarry
there is a lay-by. A father parked there
and murdered his children to spite his wife…
From somewhere out of sight multi-coloured
birthday balloons rise into the still air.

Though the way is well marked, the lessening
of the gradient relieves. Before the last
ice age this was ocean and may be so
again – but the murder of children
is irredeemable.

 

 

 

LOST

Fanny Adams' grave, Alton cemetery, Hampshire
Fanny Adams' grave, Alton cemetery, Hampshire

 

After the fluorescent shops and the snatched music,

the side street was damp and dark –

but a bag of chips and a manipulative adult

made the emptiness freedom.

 

Waterways were trawled and the usual,

time-dishonoured suspects questioned.

Down river, high tides returned her nine year old body.

 

The funeral cortège was a carriage and horses

and the local press was effulgent.

But gossip condemned her single mother,

living in a hostel on benefit.

 

The killer lived two floors down,

an estranged father of daughters –

a violent drunk, unemployed, unschooled.

 

Victim, mother and murderer

threaten the equivocal city.

Losers and losing

challenge its achievements.

 

Death is only one result of murder.

Remember sweet Fanny Adams – mutilated,

immortalised, profaned  unthinkingly!

 

The murder and rape of children

seem beyond words, understanding,  iniquity

– and another’s lack of love or the  means to love

is out of our  grasp, lost beyond finding.