“Today feels like a good day to die”

Wasn’t what I wanted to hear

As I began my second shift of the day.

Seated in the back of an armored Cortina

Unable to control my own destiny.

A wyrd personified fatalism

Clung to D section like a,

Scourge and a torment.

An inevitability informed their behavior.

To lose 9 of your own, seated eating,

Taking respite briefly in the evening

Changes you, it changed them. The loss

The frantic searching in the dark

The bodily mayhem and the baying crowds.

So they set themselves apart,

The rest of us often observers

Unable to intervene in their

Professional dementia, where

Lines were crossed. Irrationality pervaded

How they viewed the world

Outside the station gates.

There, at that time, the ‘Troubles’

Felt very much like a war, a bloody

Gruesome unforgiving unacknowledged

War right here at home.