The debutante floats down the stairs,
gloriously made up dead-eyed stare.
Hand rests light on banister.
can’t grip too tight for tendon’s tear.
Fabric flows over fragile frame.
Shawl on shoulders hunched with shame.
muscles mangled, marked and maimed.
Blindly believing she’s to blame.
These daughters of a generation
grew to dream of degradation
and aren’t presented to society as they ought
but instead face their attackers in days in court.
Boys who play at being tough.
Punch-bag girlfriends painted as sluts
by advocates paid by tax payers’ pounds
to let violent criminals walk around.
“Service the community,
pay your fine and you’ll be free.
Legal aid with pay my fee.
You can put your faith in me”.
How dare they show their face in the street?
Hold it high and smile and meet
supposed friends who go and treat
as heroes boys who girlfriend beat.
200 hours, some cash, no bars,
while they walk about bearing your scars,
sometimes bear your babies too
‘cause they can’t afford the boat fare to Liverpool.
Meanwhile back in those same courts
other battles are being fought.
15 years for importation
of a herbal medication.
Sole carer of his wife, for saving
his son from men who wanted to erase him.
This justice is a fallacy.
It’s all misjudgements I can see.
Don’t say they need help mentally
when she needs reconstructive surgery.
These boys who never do hard time
perpetuate their life of crime
and become the kingpin slime
of empires rotting communities spine
who drag us all down to slum-like homes.
Curfews, flood-lights, no-go-zones.
Locked in for safety. Don’t go out at night.
Don’t walk down dark alleys. Don’t wear clothes too
tight.
Don’t’ stick your head up, don’t have any pride.
Let these happenings go on island-wide.
Say nothing and just keep it inside.
Brush under the carpet that she nearly died.
The law is an ass, not a donkey, an ass
and since I wrote this more miscarriages will have passed
and the new Chief Minister will be raising a glass
and we’d better see things changing.
Fast.
