What is right in his own eyes.

This is based on a number of personal experiences of shared pain, and on Judges chapters 19, 20 and 21.


Oh! That the flesh would eat itself.
That what men did would destroy themselves alone,
Only to experience their own unclenliness, dirt.
If but only for a second,
Would men still do what was right in their own eyes?

Would we then understand?
The shifty, slick manner of subtle secrecy,
Preying on innocent, if foolish, souls.
That would consume the consumers soul.

The deathly darkness
The alcohol poured down the neck coming straight out as sweat.
As the evil oozes out of the eyes.
In the thumping dullness of the senses, losing all control.

Oh! The beasts, the animals!
Have they lost all humanity?
Replaced it with guilt-ridden practices,
Leading only to the betrayal of all good,
Becoming vessels of the devil's work.

To dismember the body far too late to save the person.
The savage acts of mindful brutality,
When every man does what is right
In their own eyes.

And while asleep the fleshly party continues.
Sacrificing life, worse than torture.
Men, intoxicated, demand the innocent one
Forcing her through hell.
For only the deathly satisfaction of every man who did what was right
In their own eyes.

And when awake,
Embarking on another fleshly party
The dismemberment of the maybe dead.
The man who does what is right in his own eyes,
Sparks the most grotesque of civil sin.

War On Semantics

This poem is about the Genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

The stains of the blood of the innocent
Of 1963 and 1973 had only started to fade
They still spelt the same word in the dirt
That they always had
GENOCIDE

Year numbers grow uniformly
As does the hope of an international presence
Conflicting convictions, order restrictions
Peaceful predictions, sent to monitor
GENOCIDE

1994 Rwanda had a glimpse of the 21st century
Beyond machete horizon
And that new mountain of festering death
Beginning with the rumours of an organised insanity
GENOCIDE

Pre-determined death of one; trigger
Prescribed prejudice, take up your arms
Call to the children to carve the smile from their own childhood
And lacerate family ties
GENOCIDE

Around 800,000 killed in one hundred days
Fitting the description by eyes, bloodshot with rivers
“Too mad and too methodical to be understood”
Described by those, silenced by memories of
GENOCIDE

Scavenger birds picking at the skin
Of the masses; no longer bleeding
With the last memories of rape, and last experience of the blade
The scavenger birds testify to
GENOCIDE

Observing without acting
The screams scarcely reaching the ears of the UN
And barely pierce through to the thoughts
Of who’s biggest challenge is to publicly avoid the label
GENOCIDE

Putrid murder of words
Permitting what they cannot say
Semantics severing veins of hopeful victims
Because a commitment of compassion comes with the word
GENOCIDE

Let hatred be called hatred and murder be called murder
Let selfishness be called selfishness and death; death
Let wasted lives be called wasted lives and blood be called blood
Let injustice be called injustice and this extermination be called
GENOCIDE

But it’s too late
800,000 lives are gone

Will the peace keepers be observers
Of the next extermination?

ethnic cleansing
GENOCIDE


In 1994 around 800,000 Tutsi's were murdered after the Hutu leader of Rwanda was killed when his plane was taken out by a mysterious missile. The Genocide was planned by the authorities. The presence of the UN in various areas of the country gave the people hope of protection, but this was not to be, the UN troops were under strict orders to do nothing but monitor the 'peace'. The leaders of the UN succeeded in their aim of keeping out of it but not using the word Genocide to describe what was happening. With the term Genocide comes the obligation to provide all help possible. The word Genocide was used after the dust was beginning to settle and the killing had stopped.

Dispute

Oh you unmeasured vastness
You expansive sea of dark and light
Courage has to drink itself
Before it dares to look upon you

Bodies stumble, blind by eyelids
Made heavy by the weight
Of what there is to see
Potential must drench itself in flames

As courage dares not walk
And knowledge instructs sight to guide
How must I step
With contradiction gripping my heels?

With my, now half-ash, blazing potential
Becoming camouflaged with dust
Brandished out in front of me
There’s nothing much to trust

Hope’s head hung low in sad predictability
Of the decisions repetition, solitary exploration
Leads a trail to the dregs of what
Was never meant to be found

There potential is extinguished
By the shame of self control
Only ignited by the admissions of selfishness
And by the surrendering of the soul

I Wish I'd said

Wisps of thought
Paint a face; friend forbidden
Or at least advised against

Branded onto the
Inside of my skull
Fragile features, not infirm. Unfading

Cautious curiosity causes
Catastrophic anti-climatic dialog
Of ‘wish I’d said’

Delicate details deny ambitions
Of erasing love as temporary
And as a one-sided full potential

Unknown stings my eyes
I should have listened to the moon and stars
And the silence of anticipation

Distance dulls unknown’s ugly
But reasons cannot take the weight
Of mystery, beyond lust

I still must give up this burden of unknown

Excitement

Excitement
Despite disappointment
Turmoil calms
Is the world in your palms?
You can do greater things than these,
Just tell me how, please?
The truth will set you free
But it will never let you be.

A Question

Will technology be the end of us all?
Can I not have been born into Shakespeare’s family?
Back when a quill was eloquence?
When letter writing was fashionable?
When fashion wasn’t understood?

Can I be a writer?
Do I have to be an apologist?
Can I write to excite and inspire?
Or must I argue and convince?

Is romanticism such a bad thing?
Can we not all go around with our heads in the Lord’s clouds?
So to think more of another than oneself?
Was I really born for such a time as this?
Can I not have been born to a simple life?
Is it ever a simple life?

Can I really have an influence?
Can I really be loved?
Do I really think far too much?
Am I really that selfish?
What is self-worth?
Is it attainable?

Will we become so introspective?
So far that we implode?
Do we do that ourselves?
Or is it the internet, Sky, spin-doctor, sex dripping media?

Do I despair?
End it all?
Is there hope?
Hope?
Salvation?
Hope?