Boy Soldier

From my soon-to-be-published collection - Memories of Time Travel - a poem inspired after reading of the life and work of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, after his murder by religious fundamentalists, 

 

Boy Soldier

 

A life ambushed before it’s ever begun

an orphan soldier at the end of a gun

it takes a village to raise a child

but that village

is razed to the ground,

 

Violence, no child should witness

allegiance demanded buries revenge

burning, fear hate hardens,

and infects the next,

 

Out of darkness

a knife slashes

rifle ready he shoots

his mother’s scared face falls away

wakes in cold sweat again,

 

Proven promoted rewarded

a circle of abuse perpetuates

the shiver on his heart

his life a shadow,

 

Everything he was meant to be

grows ever fainter,

memories beaten bloody silenced

calling from a prison truck

just faces of the dead,

 

His future locked

on a path that narrows

to an end

his story will not be told

just another corpse to clear away.