"Boston"

It's a marathon
Not a sprint
So you shouldn't
Be bombing it.
You just can't comprehend
How your life will end
Too soon
Before the finishing line.
Goodnight sunshine.
They say ice hockey is a tough sport
Not me, I thought.
26.2 miles
Four dead in two days.
One by mother nature
Three by a bastard son's hand.
Almost incomprehensible
In our Western world
As the mayhem and gore unfurled
In real time on Twitter
Body parts flying like litter.
But while I am shocked to the core
It's not the dead I feel sorry for
Not that I wanted you to depart
From head to toe blown apart
Nothing can be done for you.
You're gone. Deceased.
Not coming back.
My heart goes out to
Those who went to watch a race
Now scarred with a smashed up face
Or no arm. Or a leg lacking.
For ever.
Your body wrecked by a bomb
Almost a hundred years
After the Somme.
The cruelty of man
Some things never change.

　

Dulwich Poet 17th April 2013

( I wrote this after the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, in the USA, and the natural death of a marathon runner in the Brighton Marathon, in the UK, the day before. I was left thinking the ones who died in the blast were the lucky ones, the maimed have the rest of their lives to suffer. And the man who collapsed and died in Brighton...he died young, but died quickly, doing something he loved. No pain. Perhaps he was lucky in death too?)