With innocent smile

she presides

over new reports

she was unable

during her own brief life

to comprehend.

Her name is now entwined

with terms like  “decaying”

“serial killer’s victim” and  “shallow grave”.

What did she live through

between the smiles

and the moment of her death?

What desires not yet professed

were by her abductor’s hands crushed?

What hopes were shattered?

What trusts betrayed?

The contrast between the calm image

in her school photos

and the shocking jargon

of the crime reporters,

the disparity

between the beauty lost and the gruesome details,

between what she was

and what has become of her,

warns us all

that when innocence blossoms

it flowers in a brutal world.

– Larry Smeets

Criminal Lawyer: Vancouver

We sit alongside

a long court table:

the prosecutor to the right –

solitary, silent,

unsmiling; my client

on edge to the left.

We’re nationals all

of the same land.

Yet within these walls

there’s no family of man.

Government lawyers,

lawmakers and police

work here hand in hand,

a self-governing kingdom

ruling over the rest.

Their task today:

to get the court on side.

The judge comes in.

A guilty plea is entered.

The hearing begins.

The prosecutor reads

from lines scripted

by Burnaby RCMP,

portraying in the worst way

my client’s deeds.

His problems cease

to be a private concern;

they’re the Queen’s problem now

and must be handled

(urges her crown counsel)

with a firm hand.

The prosecutor quotes

from the Canadian Criminal Code

as if it were a holy tome

handed down from Mount Ottawa

on tablets of stone.

Admits no exceptions

to the rules of the land.

Sees no proper course

in life for a drug-addicted man

but blind obedience

to Parliament’s command.

This prosecutor’s a hammer.

The court is his anvil.

My client is untempered steel.

Justice is the sound heard

when the four of us connect.

– Larry Smeets

Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of 2011:
 (“For reasons I can’t really explain, I went from being a spectator to becoming part of the mob mentality that swept through many members of the crowd ….  I am truly ashamed of what I did.” Nathan Kotylak, aged 17, reflecting on his role in setting a police cruiser on fire during the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of June 15, 2011)

We walk a blind stranger

across a crowded crosswalk,

or give coins to the poor man

seated at the street corner,

clenching a sign that says

‘No Job – Will Work For Food’.

Washed by gentle summer rain

we feel generous and kind.

It’s easy to conclude

we are charitable men.

But what if this were

a different locale,

a different time?

What if the blind stranger

stood on the arrival platform

at Auschwitz death camp

in the year 1943;

was a Jewess selected

by Nazi conquerors

for the gas chamber?

Would we still offer our arm?

What if the poor man

crouched at the corner

of the Mayan temple Chichen Itza

in the year 1000;

was a hostage of war

destined for blood sacrifice

to the celestial gods?

Would we dare intercede?

What if these were

the same streets we walk

each day to work,

but with a different scene?

The local hockey team

has just lost the play-offs.

We stand in the midst

of a surging crowd

of fuming fans.

Hooligans kindled

by a hidden agenda

overturn cars,

set them afire.

Others smash in windows

and ransack stores,

terrorizing all inside.

What would we do now?

We could simply turn away

and go home.  But we find

it’s hard to withdraw.

For the riot’s shepherds

exude a certain savoir faire.

They’re exulted somehow –

above the day-to-day grind.

Have they broken free

from the straightjacket

binding you and me?

How could their actions,

which many cheer on,

possibly be wrong?  Do we

offer them a helping hand?

In Auschwitz or Chichen Itza

the high price to be paid

for lending aid is clear.

So too (with the benefit of hindsight)

is the right thing to do.

But that’s not so here.

The danger may be clear,

but virtue’s cost is obscured.

We’re led to do things

we’ve not done before,

only then to apprehend

we’ve committed crimes

deserving condemnation.

So why cross this Rubicon?

No doubt we’ve made

a life-changing choice

far too casually.

But there’s a deeper cause.

The decision was based

not on any weighing

of right and wrong

(for if the truth be told,

we probably didn’t know),

but on a spur of the moment

impulse to belong.

So how harshly

should those who’ve fallen

be judged?  Let’s seek

first to understand them –

in all their unpredictability,

violence and fragility.

Understand how the scene

dictated the choices many made.

Adrift on a stormy sea

of life, they hunger

for new experiences,

for excitement,

for rapture.

Their days one long search

for somewhere firm to land,

they found themselves

cast up here

on this riot-torn street –

they went with the flow.

So in these hours of shame,

recrimination and blame,

let those who can

be generous and kind.

Help our fallen neighbours

come to understand

what they’ve done,

whom they’ve harmed.

Let those of us who can

lend them a helping hand,

so this won’t reoccur.

Out of these ashes

let us build up

a better city for all.

– Larry Smeets

Death Penalty in China:
(Dedicated to those working for the abolition of the death penalty in the Peoples Republic of China, a country where thousands are executed each year for crimes ranging from the most heinous offences, such as murder, to lesser crimes such as tax fraud, theft of cultural relics, corruption, and small-scale drug trafficking)

It’s execution day

in Zhengzhou Town.

The parade of the condemned ends

at a grassy knoll.

There (so the saying goes)

chickens will die

so monkeys will be scared.

Two policemen

ready each bound man,

pressing him down

to a kneeling pose

with head bowed.

A third

strides up from behind

to serve up

his Just Deserts.

Little fanfare here.

No volley of bullets

fired by a mob of men

who then tramp past

the crumpled corpse

comfortably unclear

about whose bullet

exactly

took its life.

No injection either

devised to ease

the poor man’s mind

as it loosens

his soul from

its corporeal home.

Death is dispensed

by a single shot

to the back of the head.

Due consideration is given

to the comfort of killers

alone. Spared are they

the inconvenience

of having to listen

to any last words.

Spared too the burden

of having to stare

their victim in the eye

as they cast

him off a cliff

into the Next World.

His last moments

are spent looking

the other way.

– Larry Smeets

Forced Abortion in China:
(For Hui Qing)

In my eighth month

Auntie Number Three

informed on me

to the Family Planners.

Told them I was with child

again.

At night three Planners came

to my hiding place.

Tied me up like a felon

as my man and our son looked on,

to prevent escape.

I pleaded with them

“Please leave me be

till the baby is born.

Then I will have

my tubes tied.”

But they scarcely even listened.

They’d heard it all before.

I was taken away

to thePingTanHospital.

Strapped down

on a steel table.

My blouse was lifted

and my swollen stomach probed

by an indifferent doctor

to confirm what had been heard.

Then I was injected

in the tummy.

The straps were freed.

I could not run away now

even if I wanted to.

The poison was inside.

I was left alone.

Soon laborpains began.

The spasms crescendoed

into a child’s wrenching cry.

When I heard a nurse say

it’s a girl

my heart leapt up!

Had my daughter survived?

I reached out to take her

in my arms.

“No,” I was bluntly told,

“that is not allowed.”

She was taken away.

And that is the last

I ever saw

of my little baby.

The nurse said later

the injection had pierced

her soft skull,

and she died.

When I heard the news

a part of me died too

for she was so innocent.

What law under heaven

could give any hand the right

to wipe away

such an unblemished life.

– Larry Smeets