They say the child's been radicalised
impregnated before their very eyes
a neat incision implanted with precision
blind stitched the cleft between truth and lies
How else could someone so young know
that a fire for justice would grow
beyond the need for wisdom or restraint
beyond fear or doubt or calculation
beyond the calming voice of reason
beyond the thought of treason
beyond the care if common people bleed
to concede the claims to lead
of men who play at being small pack gods
inducting them to suffer for the cause
in the hellfire spat from heaven
offer them in that blackened plume
of oil smoke and buckled burning steel
where life is pared of fripperies
barren as the landscape
They say 'radicalised' - a careful smear
the very quest to comprehend is now despised
on either side
a crime made of that last thread of virtue
before hope calls it a day
compassion gives way to the fiction
that holy truth is deemed to be
that which cannot cope with contradiction
when hands no longer scrape at barren soil
to find their roots
and humble people resign
to being trodden underfoot
and cannot rise
without the means of being radicalised
De-radicalise?
exactly how, and what should be excised
what charm or incantation?
a garlic infused stake driven through the heart?
water boarded incarceration?
a shaft of sunlight risen in the east
to lead the child back to the feast
to consume or be consumed by the greater beast?
Barney Rooney
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/they-say-the-child-s-been-radicalised/
