The killing: A Poem About the Taking of a Life
"If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created.
C.S. Lewis
No farewell words were spoken, no time to say goodbye. You were gone before we knew it, and only God knows why.
Author unknown
The Killing
“Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”
“One day, a son asked his father,
Why is it always the best people who die?”
The father answered, Son, if you are in a meadow,
which flowers do you pick? The worst ones or the best?”
Author unknown
I wrote this poem "The Killing" after receiving some devastating news that the teenage grandson of my cousin had been killed in a knife attack. I was shocked!!.. Then angry, but the overwhelming feeling is one of deep, profound sadness for the utter waste of two young lives.
I find the wanton taking of a life incomprehensible, yet so many young men continue to die in such a violent and unacceptable way.
There is something patently wrong in a society where children, some as young as ten believe that it is acceptable to carry a weapon? While there is some environment that can be perceived as violent, there are many that are not, yet, the attitudes and behavior of many youngsters are that they must be tough and aggressive to avoid becoming the targets of violence and aggression. They think that by carrying a weapon they can protect themselves, but the reverse is true.
By carrying a weapon, they are in effect, adapting to, and continuing the cycle of the same violent behavior they believe will ensure their safety and survival, but are actually resulting in more young lives wasted, more mothers tears and more communities asking what went wrong.
My heart goes out to Yvette and her family at this overwhelmingly sad time.
The Killing
They kill for love
They kill for hate
They say it's written in their fate
They kill for power
They kill for gold
Their souls are cheaply bought and sold
They kill for country
They kill for kin
Or simply for the colour of a skin
They kill in anger
They kill in fear
Love is the music they do not hear
They kill for God
They kill for religion
In their oxymoronic confusion
They kill for jealousy
To settle old scores
Resentment festers like rotting sores
They care not who's blood they spill
Never stopping to count the cost
When our precious gifts are lost
They kill to fill the empty void
The killing takes from everyone
For beauty dies when hope is gone
By J Alexis-Hagues © February 2014
