Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

This poem is very close to my heart. For my entire life I’ve never understood the damage humans do to one another, using a random set of excuses why it’s okay. It’s never okay.

Even as a toddler I told my parents that unkindness was stupid. I was born believing that. I don’t know why, but I’ve never seen the need to look at anyone and find them unacceptably different. I find different fascinating.

As I watch the world today I wonder at the state of humanity, how can we be evolving by getting worse? How can we care so little for each other, from the small things right through to running around with an offensive weapon, just because? I’m at a loss with it all.

Twinkle twinkle little star

How I wonder where you are?

No longer sharing the same sky,

Shot by a moron driving by.


Here she is, another star,

Working nights behind a bar,

After work dragged round the back,

Five times raped and five times hacked.



There he goes so full of life,

Just to fall before a knife.

There she goes, the fruit of youth,

Murdered for a foreign truth.



Walking down the street one day,

Beneath a sky of leaden grey,

One big bang, no time to scream,

That’s the last time they were seen.



In their church they met their God,

Slaughtered for a different God,

No call for peace, no word of hope

Will ever help survivors cope.



A child she, an infant he,

Killed by immorality.

Adults we will never know,

Pain we know will never go.



A cat, a dog, a horse, a tree,

All can be killed too easily.

Water poisoned, earth on fire,

Humanity?  Now who’s the liar?



What’s the answer – don’t ask me,

So often we cannot agree.

And so the pain goes on and on,

Can’t we just say that ‘this is wrong’?



Where’s the hope and where’s the end?

Where’s the path to being friends?

Where’s the strength without the fire

When preaching to too many choirs?



Throughout these lines there was no race

The victims could have any face

Any life, or any truth,

Elderly or in their youth.



What right have we to stay apart,

And not unite our human hearts,

To end this pain, to end this fight,

And work to put the future right?



To face the children one day hence,

And say that we got off the fence,

We changed the course of history,

That’s why their world is finally free.



For everyone



Deb Hawken

June 2020