Life

Posted on by celfypridd

The cock on the church spire Fixed its face to the west And on a cloudless day We walked to your funeral Along the path in the park By the shade of the river It was my task to make you smile Or even laugh and lay to one side The greyness of your widowhood […]

Life

Cover up

Posted on by celfypridd

Nineteen ninety-two

he said “I’m thinking of ending it.

Haemophiliac, poisoned with cheap blood.

HIV positive, hooked on heroin.

I’m eighteen years old.

I have no future left.”

…

I still see your mother from time to time.

Always putting on that happy smile,

but she knows me.

I was the one who talked you through it,

and she lets the smile slip.

Sometimes tears fall;

she holds my arm then,

a brief re-assurance of a kind.

…

I still feel the anger,

with this continued deceit.

He was a ten-year-old,

a mascot to the older men,

who’d taken him under their wings.

To reassure him. Telling him they were a team.

But one by one they disappeared.

And he took heroin,

to numb the pain.

His grief, his loss, the uncertainty,

it was easy.

Drugs were everywhere.

It’s the story, behind the story.

So many lives destroyed.

So many dead in so many ways.

….

So when I meet you now,

you smile and nod.

I remember the challenge

you threw.

I look at your eyes

and smile too remembering.

…

But the lies still pile,

each one on top of another,

a mountain of them still grows.

And the cover up?

of the blood scandal?

Gathers.

Continues.

…

©robcullenauthor2018