"LOSING THEM"

How many more have to cry
Parents at gravesides burying children
Who shouldn’t have died
A harmless glance, or vengeance
Trying to help someone else on their way
Wrong place, wrong time
This meant their life was taken away.

Like one mother said
She has to live with the sight
Her son, body still warm, but devoid of life
Never to grow up, never to marry
Never to have a family, children, a wife.

A sister, a cousin, a niece no more
One who tried to calm the peace
But now all that’s left… is her blood
Staining the floor.

Those that kicked down an innocent man’s door
Stabbed him, left him lying to die in pain
Please think what you’re doing
Don’t add more to the grief
Do something right for a change, hand yourself in
Help get this culture off OUR streets.

Believe when I say, for you plenty sleepless nights await
The heart-wrenching, mourning despair
The emptiness, of losing a loved one
You will be haunted by someone whom we and others held dear.

The power of love and righteousness,
Needs to leave you shaking, quaking with fear
Having you looking over your shoulder at the slightest sound
Justice will call… we are coming… we are near.

You who held the gun, you who took up the knife
You who played look-out
Or drove the get-away car or rode that bike
But ultimately you all partook
In leaving someone without their life.

Don’t you feel sorrow?
Don’t you feel remorse?
Don’t you wish you could take it all back?
Don’t you wish you could rewind back to the time
Before you dealt that stab, that punch, that fatal shot
When you were as innocent as them
Before you took off on this path
That has now become your life
Stopping a heartbeat
Because someone told you
This isn’t ‘Simon Says’
Even if Simon said to.

So aspire for a career, your own family, a job
Don’t be another one who died
Don’t become yet another yob
Exercise your mind, not your fist
Don’t become another police statistic
Who lives for scratching that trigger-finger itch.

Schoolyard and territory squabbles have got to stop
Instead reach for the heights of success
Wouldn’t it be nice to say ‘I got out of the game?
I am a survivor, boy I am blessed’ ?
Change your ways, because someday soon,
YOUR family will stand weeping one cold afternoon
Single red roses will fall silently, gently on YOUR tomb
It will be YOUR parents, crying at YOUR graveside
YOUR mates tipping brandy, saluting a friend
YOUR parents mourning their child,
YOU - Who should never have come to this end.

© 3rd July 2007 – 18:30pm Written by Angela Edgar.
WWW.ANGEE.CO.UK All Rights Reserved.
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