Another success for Frank McMahon whose poem ‘Find Me Words’ has been chosen by Reuben Woolley for publication in ‘I am not a silent poet’ the online magazine for poetry and artwork protesting against abuse in any of its forms.
The central stanzas in the poem are these:
‘Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms
the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order
more assaults.’
Frank said: “I write because I must, despite knowing that one lone voice, or even a million voices, may be helpless to prevent wars and conflicts. The distance between launching a war and the suffering which follows is so great as to destroy compassion, empathy and conscience.”
The full poem can be read here
Somewhere Else Writers Group 