Victims

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

Domestic abuse can happen anywhere in the world at any time. More often than not family members and/or friends and/or neighbours and/or teachers and/or work colleagues may have suspicions. It is not a subject on which anyone should remain silent for fear of being wrong. Better to be proven wrong than let a wrong continue and say nothing, surely…? 

Domestic abuse is not uncommon in any society; men, women, children, it can happen to anyone. Yet, the same people that will protest about environmental and Human Rights abuses will often remain silent about domestic abuse.  Where is the logic in that and what excuses can there be? Yes, well, plenty of excuses; even love - to its everlasting shame - is one of the masks perpetrators of domestic abuse often wear.

VICTIMS

Brightness falling from the sky

like summer rain, makes flowers grow,

the world shine like rainbow trout

on a school kid's line at a local stream

who should be in the football team,

but his dad's beat him black and blue

where ma's laid out on the kitchen floor,

can't take any more

Brightness falling from the sky

like acid rain, making the trees cry

as leaves die like fishes in the sea,

collector specimens neatly laid out

under glass for generations to see
how dead things appear to suggest

a history of human deprivation for want
of a better education

Shadows, like corpses on the grass;

skylark, a near forgotten sound at a spot

where revelations in the clay suggest

a once-busy stream in a world earmarked

for the winning team, the rest of us

neatly laid out under corporate glass,

(preserved for a new century, a new class)

victims of abuse

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2016

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from an earlier version that appears in 1st eds. of Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]