Fractured memories of a child soldier

Africa can be a jungle

Of dominoes

Numbered with wars

And shifting sands

~~

Such dominoes

In the hands of a child

Can only be

Dynamite

But a child

One who God hears

An Ishmael

Blasting murder

With murder

Must be on a quest

Out of sync

With conventional

Celestial calendars

~

Ishmael

Can only hear

His God within

Bereft

Of

Namaste

~

And we

Numb

To any

Aethereal Gods

Dare

To judge

And sentence

This child

With the dates

Of an earthly calendar

~~~~~~~~~~

NOTES: In response to the article "Twist in the Tale of a Child Soldier" - "The Australian" - 19.01.08 - ISHMAEL Beah is the former African child soldier turned best-selling author whose account of his time as a killer, driven by the memory of his murdered family, has sold more than 600,000 copies around the world. His searing tale made one television host's "heart hurt"...But a bizarre set of events, sparked by a West Australian mining couple, has revealed flaws in Beah's tale, A Long Way Gone.
The young author, who appeared on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton in July last year and is a UN advocate for war children, appears to have been two years older when he went to war. He would have been not 13 but 15. And instead of him spending two years in the Sierra Leone army, it would have been two or three months.
His story took place during the civil war that ripped Sierra Leone apart between 1991 and 2002. Tens of thousands were massacred, more than a third of the population was displaced and thousands of children were drafted into the rival forces, the government versus the ideologically-driven Revolutionary United Front.

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~*~ Posted also on HubPages under AuraGem + Posted "Poetry Showcase" - 20.01.08 under AuraGem.