'Fiona'

Listening to one of the black cab rapist's first victims talk on radio about her ordeal and then reading about the latest court case, when the woman we call 'Fiona' came face to face with her attacker at a Judicial Review hearing, prompted this poem.


‘Fiona’

I saw you in court

tried to imagine how you may be feeling

putting yourself out there

a victim

and then he turned up

a few yards away

you weren’t expecting that

how would that feel?

‘He’s been in my head for 15 years,’  you said

and there he is again

in front of you

he’s behind glass

but there was glass between you before

in that cab

they said you were not

a credible witness

‘A black cab driver

just wouldn’t do that.’

But he did

and you have lived with him in your head

for 15 years

believing that you let all the others down

those hundreds

who went through that

after you

because someone decided

you were not believable

This poem was first published here: http://www.poetry24.co.uk/

 

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/challenge-worboys-release/

BBC Radio 4 Today programme clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05xcm63

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/john-worboys-pictured-arriving-high-court-judge-orders-attend/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/21/john-worboyspolice-failed-victims-black-cab-rapist-supreme-court/

Sevilla

I was pleased to have this poem published along with two others in the 'Love & Music' edition of The Writers' Cafe website on February 14th this year. I started writing it when were by the Rio Guadalquivir in Sevilla in October 2015. On the day it was published by The Writers' Cafe we were back there!


Sevilla

(The labyrinths

formed by time

dissolve

from ‘And After’, Federico García Lorca)

Sun on the river

lovers sit on the wall

                (boats row by, turn

                and go back again)

waves slap on the wall

lovers laugh together

                (across the river the cafes

                are opening)

 

songs in the air

lovers kiss on the strand

moon on the river

lovers embrace under the bridge

                (across the river the cafes

                are closing)

boys play guitars under trees

lovers dance beneath stars

 

First published:  https://thewriterscafemagazine.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/the-writers-cafe-magazine-issue-5-love-music/