Bad Eggs (a poem)

Came across your picture on the internet today.
I was not expecting it.

Tried to zoom in to check the look in your eyes
As you pose
In your new role, new job title,
Standing between two tourists.

Could not really recognise you.
I mean – it was you, looked like you, your name was there.
You looked skinnier, or maybe that’s just me looking for evidence
That my occasional thoughts of impending doom
Have their foundations in reality.

But
it was no longer my you
The you who once was such a part of me,
And all I can feel now
Is the smell of bad eggs.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE (a poem about Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, written 2004)

This life is random –
Rather than a lottery it is a Russian Roulette.
As I walk through the thousands upon thousands of souls
Parked in this refugee camp
I want to hide
Because pain gets in the way of thinking
How can we inflict death
Into the lives of one another.
It is grey, it is cold
And desperation screams at the top of its lungs
From the silent eyes of those observing me while I watch them,
From the protection of my shell,
Various categories in this human zoo.
Isaiah 32:17
“Justice will produce lasting peace and security”.
It was spoken longer ago than I can even count
And yet we have not learnt its lesson.
I put myself on the front line
And ask to see, everyday, the grain of justice I can bring into a world so needy
Before I leave the burden of this responsibility
Into the hands of those who will just wash them clean
And decline the honour
Of serving the Prince of Peace.

wide eyed child (a poem written early 2005)

Wide Eyed Child
(prov 6:1-5)

I found today
The word of the Lord
That would have saved me
Had it found me
Before my dangerous naivety.

The sting of a painful realisation
Of my own illusion
Makes room for amore helpful
Dose of understanding, repentance, forgiveness and exaltation.

God is good, all the time
His word is life
For those who are blessed to receive it.

Now I ask
For his light, his spirit to supply
To my ability to lose myself
In what is only relatively urgent, marginally important,
So that I might read
Daily drops of dew to keep me alive
In a world of wolves
Dressed as little lambs
And traps set on every corner
For this wide eyed child.