As I entered the subway in the early morning spit and drizzle
My sleep rusted eyes saw bags, black plastic bags,
Bin bags, there were three, huddled at the far end,
Against the biting cold, the trinity of bags rustled,
Flipping, flapping, hugging, seeking warmth in the tunnel.

And yet…

When my shoes slipped across the wet subway floor
And I got nearer to the ******* heap at the far end,
My eyes suddenly froze and my steps slowed,
Those bin bags were acting as a windbreaker,
A windbreaker for a body upon the concrete floor.

A man without a home…

Wind, shrieking a heartless hymn of obscene guilt,
It punched through my carefully guarded sense of humanity,
A man slept there, discarded and forgotten, head near the gutter,
Shoes curled, body curled, a man searching for a mother’s warmth,
The light above harsh, dank, and as lifeless and as merciless as a tomb.

Do not forsake him…

This man, he was the son of the morning, dreaming in lands unknown,
Sleeping in lands known, attacked by politicians, kicked by society,
Demonized by the press and bitten by the rabid media machine,
Knifed by the blade of youth, and eulogized by the church and elders,
Yet, through it all, we all knew, and we silently walked on our way.

Autumn light,
It shines bright,
Look how it delights,
It showers and ignites.

Then...

In the blink of coming night
The bright light
Becomes twilight,
And we fade from life's sight.

He flew to our shores on the back of a black iron bird,
Immigration stamped him through on a student visa,
His mother’s kiss still lingered upon the lips of memory,
To Sheffield he came waving away Sri Lankan tears.

Life was hard, life was sleepless, life was unrelenting,
To eat his daily bread he worked long into the dread night,
By day he studied English knowledge inked in books old,
And by the arrival of twilight he delivered steaming dreams.

Every day, every single day, by the light of day, he spoke,
He spoke to his beloved mother so far away across oceans,
They had a bond true and deep, a mother and her beloved son,
But wings wet with evil were flapping closer and closer…

On the night before the Eve of All Hallows the darkness came,
As he drove through a wet night on the last shift of his job,
As he went to deliver his final aromatic pizza of the evening,
That’s when the demons of ignorance stabbed away his hopes.

They came from an infernal zone and they sliced through him,
The silent angels watched with horror stitched in their sockets,
His liquid life ebbed away at the coffin wheel of his delivery car,
The cold October moon wept milky light upon the warm blood.

The media ravens will label him  ‘this’ and  ‘that’ and the  ‘other’,
And soon, all too soon, his name will melt into memory’s mist,
His name was Thavisha Lakindu Peiris and his life sings no more,
Under Halloween’s one eyed moon a soul kneels for justice.

So…

You see me,
You judge me,
You pity me,
You forsake me.

You burgled me,
You marked me,
You left me,
You forgot me.

*I stand alone no more…

I stand tall,
I stand high,
I stand silent,
I stand still.

I walk with friends,
I walk with truth,
I walk past the lies,
I walk to freedom.

We are the weeping children of far distant desert lands,
We are the daughters nourished upon the ink of olive branches,
The stubble of our village was shaved off without news or trace,
Life’s bittersweet aftershave of memory still stings to this day.

We are the children with forlorn hands and forgotten faces,
We are those who have suckled the milk of honey and grief,
Our school is entombed beneath an avalanche of oppressive lies,
Our tongues string and weave the haunting tunes of broken trust.

We are the girls dressed in rags caressed by death’s pernicious smile,
We are the orphans who shelter in cemeteries dug by men of war,
Our eyes sparkle and glow with a kaleidoscopic firework of fear,
The carnation of our youth will be stitched into dry dead wreaths.

We are the sisters who buried the flowers that were our brothers,
We have frolicked under the barbed shadow of death’s high wall,
Our toys are plucked from the palm of dates sweet with our hopes,
The fresh fragrance of deliverance shall one day perfume our nation.

Art painted, art confined, art denied,
The skin of the canvas cages and congeals the art,
Colours more plumbed than the peacock of paradise,
Yet trapped and tossed about in stormy framed emotions.

In the end it all bleeds away,
The paint dries, decays, and dies,
Faint leaky lines leave behind faded memories,
Life’s canvas rusts on the ground in solemn silence.

Hark now! Unhinge your ears!

Hear now music flowing from elegant veins,
Listen to how the strings pulse and weave the notes,
Watch how the music flies free and completely unconfined,
Those butterfly melodies entwine and in the air flutter and swirl.

Their dance is the ecstasy of a nightingale’s song,
They sprinkle and circle round and round, up and down,
The music of the cello is love’s supple spine, smooth and sensual,
Hear it, inhale it, caress it, sway with it, and be at ease and free with it.