S – 21

S – 21


Fourteenth day of May ‘78


Chan Kim Srung, with child, fated before the Rollecord, quarter plate
Her sleeping baby taken to Crow’s Feet Pond, beyond the rusting gate
Somersaulted in the Summer sunshine against the twisted killing tree
Gnarled, barkless pain of spread baby brains, raining Khmer Rouge red


Fourteenth day of May ‘78





Harry Mills
A10 Bolabog Apartelle Boracay Philippines
14th August 2012
From : The Shadow of a Dead Child

Decisions

Decisions


‘It has to be your decision’
Scared by the young doctor’s white coat pocket
Scarred with a series of blue biro skids
‘He’s our only kid’
The life-support drip slips out of his life
Soon to cease being, soon to be deceased


‘It has to be your decision’
The pea-green strobe straight-lines
No more drips, no more blips on the monitor
Rising and falling like electronic hiccups
Then the tears and conversation about organ donation
Papers already signed, sealed and now to be delivered


‘It has to be your decision’
Our last goodbyes, last kissing closing eyes
His small dead body to be surgically dissected
Elected, by his mother to save the lives of others
His body washed, his blonde hair combed and parted
Departed, to the cold waiting kidney bowls




Harry Mills Boracay Philippines 12th August 2012

Taphephobia

Taphephobia


Awake the afterbirth of blood, without a kiss
Of mother’s clawed, gnawed twisted wrists
Her bitten tongue, her babies only silent song
A voice without breath, without breathing
Leaving their souls, her womb in casket tomb
Buried alive, their last eternal cries for death




Harry Mills
Bolabog Apartelle Boracay Philippines
8th August 2012
From :The Shadow of a Dead Child


In 1901 a pregnant Madam Bobin was prematurely buried alive.
After being exhumed by her father, an autopsy showed that she had not died
of yellow fever, as diagnosed, but from asphyxiation in her coffin
where she gave birth to her baby before both dying an horrendous death

Sixteen Summers

Sixteen Summers

Slithering serpents, slimed with their own salvia

Thieving contortionists of stolen young souls

Of youth, snapped lilies not yet bloomed

Of sowed wheat, not yet swayed in afternoon sunlight

Of fruit, unripe, still bitter to the tongue

Your evil knuckled hand of death

Stretching out to snatch its wet-eyed, first day trophy

To suck down into your serpents den of quicksand mud

Be shameful of this, his baptism morning of eternity

Let his beloved Woodhouse Lane weep bitterly

Behind the shrouds, of soiled terraced lace curtains

Harry Mills Boracay Philippines 5 March 2012

Dedicated to Tony’s youngest ghost :

Private Horace Iles

Aged 16, the youngest soldier to die on the first day of the Somme

1^st July 1916