WALT: Write for an audience. The challenge in writing poems is editing. Once you have poured your heart out and written down your most intimate thoughts (that’s the way I look at it) it is hard to find fault with it.
Forgotten
No bombs.
No guns.
Nothing but peace.
That is what it was.
No crying babies on the street.
No mothers screaming for her children.
Just happiness.
That is what it was.
Men in suits,
With pretty words,
Hiding the truth.
That is what it is.
Pain, fear, grief.
Home a meaningless word.
Shut out at the border,
Clawing frantically at metal fences tall as mountains,
Our chance at freedom… gone.
That is what it is.
Yelling, Fighting.
‘Please, please-’
A single bullet can change a life.
Out all alone,
In this big world.
Forgotten.
This poem was written for the Marsden Valley Education Centre competiton. The competition is being held for the Ukraine. Children could enter a painting of a sunflower (the Ukraine national flower) and/or a poem about refugees. While writing I tried to imagine the child in the story was around my age who was just numb. No life. They weren’t a bright, happy kid. They were a shell. Telling their story as if it were facts that didn’t affect them.