Mother of a Criminal
Why does nobody feel sorry
For the mother of a criminal?
She was unaware of the snake
Curled up in her womb
The Christian woman
Wouldn’t harbour a sinner like him, surely?
But the police called her from work,
Told her they need to talk,
To the station she walks with a mother’s fear,
The worst could have happened
And it did
But it’s not what she thinks.
What does she do when they tell her
He raped somebody?
She took the book from her palms
And the psalm from her prayers,
She wishes, in a twist of fate
That he was the victim
But look at that boy
He was hungry for that poet boy,
Of course he loved him to death
There were flames in those eyes
And blood on his hands.
But she never raised a criminal,
His father’s fists just raised clones
He collapsed under the tyranny to which he was prone
She understood. She couldn’t protect her baby
And happy childhood memories
Of her and her angel dropped
Like butterflies in a gas chamber
After his father hit him
He played with knives
He ripped flowers form the ground
He ate cherries and kissed boys
And kissed their cherries
He learnt to sing
And captured boys with his voice
The same hands that played piano
Plucked my ribs like chords
The singer of songs
Read me like sheet music
And with his mouth and hands
Took hold of me like a microphone
And I fell.
Nobody feels sorry for
The mother of the criminal.
Who taught him piano,
Watched him get beat.
She created him,
But when he raped me
Two mothers lost their sons
One gave birth to a corpse
The other a gun
Had she known what he’d become,
She’d have twisted that babies kneck
And snap! Like opening her husbands booze.
I pray for her, she lost her faith with her son,
Took to the bottle like her father
And has the same bruises I do.
Poetry by Luke Cable 