‘Witness’ by Daya, Year 10, Colyton Grammar School

Blood rushing through your veins

A pulse beating of life in rivers beneath your skin

 

Outside this barrier the world ends,

Pulse disrupted,

Off rhythm and screaming

The only drum that of the military’s march

Heavy Feet and amour.

False security

 

your heart keeps beating

And you have no choice but to bear witness to its death

view the destruction of mankind.

those, so moral leaders

guiding us with burnt out torches through the darkness

promises of light that will never come.

 

the tragic beauty that is the human race

preprogramed, made for self-destruction.

 

we lie in wait, hiding.

hand fed orders, guidelines for our safety.

the same hand that silences phone calls

and burns letters that call for destructions end,

the same hand that will sign off the explosion that shakes your home,

Displace your family,

Allow your children to bear witness to their mothers deaths

 

Blood rushing through your veins

A pulse beating of life in rivers beneath your skin

 

You can return to Eden, peacefully,

the calm before the storm

 

The sun will come through your broken windows,

and you will go to meet it.

You feel the grass brush your feet

and you will lay there

for hours and hours.

First you will fear your body being taken from you

the soft patter of animal’s feet becoming the rhythm of death

the feel of insects feeding on your decaying skin,

a constant reminder of the unknown stillness ahead of you.

And the hours will turn to days.

As the flesh comes free from your bones,

green stems wrap their gentle leaves around your empty skull

and the trees will whisper their forgiveness at the waste of their world,

at the destruction that lay out before them

 

God looks on at bloodstained earth.

stands, passive through to the ending

the floor of Eden saturated and red.

no choice but to be a witness

In mankind’s self-written end