There was no time to grow,
Learned to deal a vengeful blow,
Before I learn how to talk,
Before I could fully learn to walk,
I had to be a man,
Born in the jungle,
Born in to violence,
Death a common sight,
All that mattered was might,
At a very tender age,
Learned to pull a trigger,
Before I could know right from wrong,
Claps of violence,
Peals of gunshots,
Music of my childhood,
Arrrh did I write childhood,
I knew nothing like that,
There was no childhood,
Only an adulthood,
Learned in a school of hardship,
Education was an alien,
I grew up abused,
No father and mother,
Learned to abuse,
Found pleasure in killing,
Killing fellow man,
That became the object of my mission,
I hated because that is all I was taught,
I had to earn a living,
Rape was an important weapon,
My virgin mind had been raped,
I learned rape in every form,
Mind, soul and body,
As a child I had to earn a living,
I had to keep my space,
Violence was my weapon,
Until she forcefully stole me away,
Put me on a different path,
Supplanted my hatred with love,
Ignorance with learning and education,
Freed me from the monstrous jaws of despair,
Gave me the light wings of hope,
Lit a candle in my darkness,
From a messed and stressed up adult,
In the body of a thirteen year old child,
I began a healing process,
I was set on the path to recovery,
By the woman I now call my mother,
My angel in flesh and blood,
This is the story of a child of war,
Caught in a war between adults,
Which inevitably becomes a war on childhood,
A war on the future of the world.
Brussels © March 2015 afesehngwaHilary
