I saw the TV news the other day –

A man stabbed some people

In a park in Reading.

 

Those poor folk had died,

rushed to hospital in vain,

nothing could be done and they perished.

 

An atrocity and most probably needless;

horrific and unfathomable,

strange but yet too common

in our curious, sometimes violent society.

 

I wondered about what might drive

a person to commit such an abhorrent act,

what might be in their head,

what they might be going through

to drive them to perpetrate such a horrible crime.

 

In short, I profess ignorance

over any motivation to violence,

and I pray that folk’re rescued

from a tendency to lash, to beat, to fight.

 

But I know I am naïve to many of the drivers

of such strange behaviour –

to thrust a knife so hard to pierce the skin

and penetrate another person’s body.

 

The TV news, though, knew all about it,

they had the whole story,

those journalists had got to the bottom of it:

within hours, they’d reckoned the whole thing out.

 

The chap was not thought to be a terrorist,

not thought to be part of a sleeper cell,

In fact, very little was known about the man,

and even less known about his obscene motivations.

 

Although he was known to be from overseas,

had come here to seek asylum,

and the TV news informed us –

although this was unconfirmed, of course –

that he might even be mentally ill.

 

There was no discourse as to the chap’s education,

as to perhaps any other illnesses he’d suffered from,

perhaps some information about his sexuality

or even his spiritual beliefs was missing, too –

or maybe what books he had been reading,

to pervert his mind and make this seem like the right thing to do.

 

The TV news provided information that may be true,

gleaned from asking journalistic questions.

I have no knowledge of these circumstances,

the TV news is my only source of insight.

 

These factors, though, were portrayed as an obvious recipe for disaster,

in our tolerant, open and welcoming society;

our TV news playing such a prominent role

in tackling the myths and vagaries of prejudice.