For Idil Ibrahim
In memory of Tim Hetherington - 1970 - 2011

I cannot stay and speak my truth while the front line has no voice.
The carpet doesn't share substance with the blood-clumped
dust of Liberia; Red wine doesn't stain nations and it hasn't
changed the world.

I cannot stay and walk these steps while the fragile youth stand.
Our Sunday morning route doesn't cover landscapes of wounds
and bodies; Central Park has never felt a thousand welted
feet march for death.

I cannot stay and see your face while molten plastic scars her world.
Your delicate eyes have never seen the darkness of a child's grief;
Our democracy cannot fathom the searing, slow drip after a family
massacred.

I cannot stay and feel worthy of your love while injustice goes unseen.
My lens has immortalised what we held dear, but is yet to capture
the human condition; I spoke to you like I spoke to them;
Through decades of mortar fire I spoke to them.

Fleeting, rolling days, weeks,
years of half-memories with
no faces,
but places - parks,
playgrounds, forests, ditches -
in which youthful time was
spent without a thought for
permanence or preservation.
The "best years of your life"
twisted, tarnished, pastel-
smeared to indistinguishable
faces, places, seasons,
feelings, fears, loyalties -
scrunched up and abandoned;
left to seep inside a clockwork mind
teeming with trivial tenterhooks
and patchwork recollections.

I've walked the path many times
before and since.
It is always calm -
baron but teeming
with a muddled
disquiet of
once thought
final thoughts.
It's a place of peace
in which everything
resonates chaos
to the point you can
feel it invade
each synapse -
Ivy smothering
your process.
A slow-release
maddening hum
amplified by the
wind sweeping through
monstrous, scrawny
trees in formation:
They held the bodies
and winced when
their branches broke.
Yet still there is a draw
to the energy
festering there,
be it from the asylum
at the top of the hill
leaking memories
of abandoned
sons
daughters
mothers
fathers,
or from the long submitted
acceptance
of martyrs who inhaled a
sharp cluster of reasons
as their last
with solidarity.