Mother's Emergency Broadcast

This is an Emergency
Broadcast. It's 1.05 pm at a house
on the East Side of Ipswich
and a five year old boy is holding his
friend at gun point.

Screw the form and the language and the punctuation and the repetitive annoying 'and'
two little boys who should have been sleeping 'neath the haystack, warm, full, wanting of life
instead it's tacky, lost in screaming sound, blood on clothes for mothers to find, little
lads found in black bags.

This is an Emergency Broadcast
and you're going to make tea.
This is an Emergency Broadcast
and where could your son be?

Rewind the time, go back to 11.40 am.
Watch your lad creep out the door with a pistol
'hind his back like a watergun. Pull him back
and hold him, tell him you forgive him

for last night when he broke that plate, that he didn't break -
his friend Andrew did. Why aren't you watching?
Why didn't you listen?
Your own son is the enemy. No, you're right - go make the tea.

This is an Emergency Broadcast
before the police arrive. 'Ratta tat tat.' They'll
want two sugars and two biscuits. They'll
lie, say it wasn't your fault. Five years old and it wasn't your fault. "No, they're right - I'm wrong. It wasn't your fault...love."

It wasn't me who painted 'whore' on your door.
It wasn't my son's blood I scrubbed off my hallway floor. 
It wasn't my son Andrew that got shot
oh, yes it fucking was...guess I just forgot.