Hot summer afternoons in 92,

Sarajevo.

Along the Banks of The Miljacka

The Streets shimmered a hazy hell

 

As if something beneath was venting fury.

In open spaces framed by high windows

The City’s damned would dash and dive,

Splashes of concrete ripped their flesh.

 

Eye sockets and temporal bone smashed,

Hearts exploded in tiny chests.

Mothers hung themselves in darkened rooms,

Fathers succumbed to quiet suicide.

 

Shopping bags flung loose their simple lives,

Gutters festered with blood and food

Never to be cooked, shared or prayed over

The dead piled in barrows under cover of dark

 

Some shooters kept count until madness came,

Their flashbacks fast-forwarding and freeze-framing,

More coffee, more Cigarettes, more Rakija,

Keep killing until the end, Mother Serbia.

 

Those that live now are shadows of men,

The fallout of hate and ethnic delusion

No longer the Whiskey steadies their grip

Their eyes blind, they replay only memories