A Poem

“All is night and blackness,

As the razor cuts my skin

And liquid hatred flows out

Staining the world. All is darkness.”

With that the girl in the heavy make-up

Closes her silver-bound notebook and sits down

To appreciative noises from her black-clad peers

Sitting in a circle in her gloomy room

Lit only by expensive dripping candles

And the standby light of her Xbox

Not quite concealed under a purple sheet.

(Meanwhile, in Sudan, a five year old orphan

Is struck hard across the face

By the butt of a rifle which breaks his skull.

He falls across the bodies of his newly-slain parents.

The crimson pool darkens in the heat.)

“Liquid hatred,” says one boy, sweeping back

His long black-dyed hair.

“Yeah. I feel that.” He casts a furtive glance

At the girl sitting next to him

Who pushes out her barely-concealed breasts a little.

“Yeah, hatred,” she says breathily, “for all those

Fakes and Barbie wannabes.”

(In China, a little girl looks over at the boy next to her, and smiles

And catches her finger in the machine

And screams as the blood flows out.

The other children do not pause as the man takes her away,

Just carry on making toys in the lice-infested workshop

Hoping she is the only one to go today.)

“Yeah,” says the first girl, the poet.

“All those fucking whores wrapping their legs

Around the football team every day.”

She glances at the boy with the long hair.

“Yeah,” says another boy, pale-skinned and pockmarked.

“Dirty sluts they are,” he continues as his cheeks turn red.

“Give it up for anybody.”

(On a street in London

An Albanian girl, on her fourteenth birthday

Lies on a hard bed, head turned away

From the old man grunting on top of her

Watched by three of his colleagues.

She still bears the bruises from last night

When she tried to refuse. She has learned her lesson,

And will not fight again. But she cannot help her tears.)

As the conversation goes on

The poet-girl’s mind starts to wonder

Onto other topics; her homework,

What colour nail-polish should she wear tomorrow,

Blue nightshade or stick with black,

And whether her bitch-mother had finished cooking dinner yet.

(An African girl blinks flies off her eyes,

The only movement she can muster

As she lies beside a pool of vomit

And half-digested grass. It sticks to her matted hair

As her distended stomach rises and falls

Slower with each desperate breath.)

“Lying bitch-mother,” she thought to herself.

“Yeah, she’s the one who makes my life so hard.

That’s an idea for my next poem.”