The Long Walk Home

Every rustling leaf,
Every light, flickering,
Every noise is a threat,
My own footsteps frighten me,
Echoes all around,
Walking alone through the area
With the reputation,
I catch movements
Out of the corner of my eye,
But nothing is there,
I walk through the green
Where he was shot dead,
Such a sinister silence I have
Never experienced,
A wind blows,
Almost everything encourages me
To quicken my pace,
In the distance they stand,
Huddled and suspicious,
Too far away to hurt me,
But close enough to provide the threat,
Face forward again,
My heart skips a beat,
An old man, staggering, asks how I am,
Drunken and disorderly, he stumbles away,
My pace doubles,
Just like the beating in my chest,
A youth with a balaclava cycles by,
Giving me the eye,
But does nothing to follow it up,
Thirteen year olds loiter and doss,
No threat there,
But still I just want to be home,
Every screeching car offers fear,
Every wailing siren brings wonder,
Approaching the garden now,
One car screeches by,
Nothing doing,
I open the gate,
It slams shut behind me,
I lock the porch,
Close the door,
And am met with the sounds
Of Early Days and Centuries…

I am home.

(this poem interests me because it all happened as I wrote it, even the end when I opened my front door and my CD player had - I would find out the next day - turned itself on, almost as if to greet me coming in the door; Early Days and Centuries is a song by Guillotines, made up of Gary White, Gav White and Brian 'Bry' O'Reilly).

The White Man Betrays the Indian

There was once a lonely Indian,
His clan had been lost in shoot outs,
He wandered the wild, wild west,
In search of more like him...

He remembered those shoot outs well,
His clan's screams of fear and pain lived inside him,
The heartbreak of loss he carried everywhere,
As a reminder not to trust the white man...

One day he came across a white man,
Wariness gripped the Indian,
But the white man said he meant no harm,
He too was looking for companionship...

So the Indian did what life taught him not to do,
He trusted the word of the white man,
His clear blue eyes,
Held no malice for the Indian...

So then the two of them,
The white man and the Indian,
Wandered throughout the wild, wild west,
In search of a means to live by...

But one fateful morning,
The Indian awoke to loud yells of triumph,
He opened his eyes and saw before him,
The same group of cowboys who had killed his clan...

The Indian looked at the white man,
The white man couldn't hold his gaze,.
The white man had betrayed the Indian,
Just for some food and water...

The yells of anguish from the Indian echoed all 'round,
As he lay there dying, he wore a betrayed expression,
That look would stay with the white man forever...
The echo of his anguished scream...

Would reverberate in the white man's conscience for eternity.

(inspired by Gary White's wee musical composition with the same title; it was one of the Otho demos)