Suicide bomber, how do I love thee? by Dave Urwin

Suicide bomber, who cannot be loved,

Kalashnikov brandishing terrorist,

how did it come to this unholy state?

What poison suckled in your mother’s milk,

passed on in your father’s sperm or spittle,

what lack of gently lilting lullaby

would bring you to swing your sword and behead

a man of charity or journalist?

What want of purpose or identity,

what dread infection breeding in your creed

could make you call the innocent guilty,

execute your brutal, wanton sentence

on the uncomprehending evening streets,

the crowded café, market, concert hall?

..

Not only hideous die-hard anger

of your contorted ideology

drip, drip, dripped into the harsh terrain

of the uncompromising heart and mind;

not only the churning, callous ferment

of alienation’s cancerous growth,

the resentment festering in your guts,

but some measure of each of these, then more.

How did it come to this unholy state

that some god or prophet could call ‘divine’

the grim wreaking of havoc and of pain,

the merciless snatching of cherished life?

The love you cannot know you sacrifice

and fool yourself with presumed Paradise.

..

Dave Urwin is a Mancunian poet living in rural west Wales. His first volume, ‘Towards Humanity’, was published in April 2015 by Pinewood Press. His poetry blog is on https://jadedmountain.wordpress.com.