A tragic tradition from times long past
Weak of wit and hard of heart
Thus pawns are born and
Circumstance plays its part

Here we stand again, aghast
Alas, what evil has come to pass!
Questions burn, anger rises
Vengeance brews on the horizon

The world has turned for years and years
On violence and wars, and bitter tears
You build - they break, you smile - they’re fake
Injustice reigns in misfortune’s wake
Struggle for some, victory for others
Caps are waved with fair-weather feathers

Who are they, who are we?
Who is safe, who is free?
Where is the heart that knows no fear?
Where is the mind that’s always clear?

An ephemeral world, a passing phase
The old, the new
The false, the true
A blink of an eye in eternity’s gaze

Yet weak-minded malignancies
Must ply their trade of misery
Dispensed with as refuse in this life
****** as bartered souls in the next
Fate’s hand is heavy and dark is the night
For the vicious heart and feeble intellect.

If you gave me your heart like I gave you mine
I would gently close my fingers
around pulsing muscle
I would clench my jaw
I would close my eyes
and I would squeeze
until it ruptured in my hand
the warmth of your blood reminding me
just how love feels

The story I read, some forty years now,
Burns inside my head.
A young woman, ***** violently
By two brothers,
Hands and face mutilated,
The horror on her father's face.
Vengeance was his alone,
As he murdered her assailants,
And boiled down their bones.
His name was Titus.
The story was four hundred years old.
Re-told from a story three thousand years older.
Re-told today.
Rwanda, Bosnis, Syria, Jordan, Dahlmer et al.
Disfiguration with acid,
Limbs gone missing,
Tongues cut out, black sockets,
Missing parts of humanity
In prison camps and resistence movements.
We're still baking pies and feeding on human flesh.
Shakespeare was never so violent.

My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
His hand is strong but my face will survive
That pain is one of a kind
My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
My mother has given up on him
My brother has but a look of grim
My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
I rest my soul, with tears in my eye
Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to die

My thoughts are twisted like a vine
Which cover me in fear and pain
I come home in a wild rage
And beat my lover once again

Waves of relief go up my spine
Yet crash at the guilt
My thoughts are twisted like a vine
Which lay on the foundations I built

After the screams quiet down
And the storm begins clearing
We feel the emotions built by frowns
And we are both left fearing

ANTLIKE STRENGTHS
A poem by Tricia Hague-Barrett 1993

An ant carries its large load across the cracks
in the path on its way homeward
Nothing gets in its way
Nothing prevents him from succeeding,

If only I could have seen the end in the beginning
where struggles are frequent but passable,
testing but not breaking my resolve to give in
to the desparate feelings of loneliness, tiredness.

Ant-like, I too have to learn to carry the heavy load,
The Teaching load, the Administrative load,
carry it across potholes, ditches, mountains
and through distant valleys of calmness.

Turbulent tests, stumbling stones,
each there to guide me along the way
Like guardian angels, each one
Heralding the Dawn of a New Day.

Ends.
(C) 1993

A new town, a new place,
Every day we see them.
They are a blessing and a curse,
To bless us with death.

They're everywhere, they live among us,
And we love them so.
Point your fingers at the tools,
Point the barrels at yourselves,
It all makes sense in our twisted world.

Call 'em blind, call 'em slaves,
We're all the same.
Clones who can't see the raw  truth,
Without a coat of sweet lies.

Sky blue lies,
But the truth runs red,
Like the blood you soak in.

Let's play a game of Russian roulette,
I'll load the gun and you place the bets.
Who the **** will make it out?
Who has to die next?

Your standards have not changed in a changing world,
Tradition has been ***** of all reason.
So set flame the number two excuse,
Forever engraved in depravity.
How can they **** us without us?
We send each other to the slaughter.
Man turns on man, child turns to killer,
Isolation becomes the evil, and reason is retribution.

So let's play that of Russian roulette,
I'll load a few guns, you call those risky bets.
How many dead bodies equals logic?
How much longer can we do this?