BLOOD AND SAND

The raging, furious sun

Bears silent, unblinking witness

To the madness of the butcher’s block

On the blood-drenched beaches

Where relaxed, calm

Happy-go-lucky strangers

Are ripped open by the madness

Of the boy with the gun

Blood and sand,

Sand and blood ---

What’s the bloody point?

When our bad is your good?

What he thought he’d done

What did he think he’d gain?

Taking everything they ever were

And what they might have been

Aiming steel, shooting lead

At soft targets, happy souls

Put in endless rivers of pain

Played out under blazing sun

Blood and sand,

Sand and blood ---

What’s the bloody point?

What goes on inside that hood?

Echoing reminders

Of other blood-stained sands

Where blades of misery

Have taken heads and hearts -

The rage and fury of misdirected youth

Promises of some golden dawn

Bringing a new world of pain

And nowhere near yet done

Blood and sand,

Sand and blood ---

What’s the bloody point?

We’ll stop you and we should

Is this the price we pay

For blood spilt on desert sands

With the smart bombs and the drones

And our own boys with their guns?

The slaughter of more innocents

In schools and hospital beds

Is always too high a price to pay

But don’t tell me we thought we’d won

Blood and sand,

Sand and blood ---

Who the bloody hell

Knows the bad from the good?

We just can’t understand

How other lives can mean so little

Wiping out what’s different

For having a different point of view -

Filling minds with gilded dreams of fitting in

In places where the strangeness is not you

Covering the sands and beaches

With still more boys and yet more guns

Blood and sand,

Sand and blood ---

What’s the bloody point

Of an endless sea of blood?

Martin A W Holmes, June 2015