Slave Ship by Jess Layton

Heads bowed, walking, walking.

Sense of terror, sense of horror.

Blood on my hands and blood on the floor.

Ship is rocking, rocking.

Don’t cry, don’t notice my degradation.

Panic and scrambling, self preservation.

People are shouting, screaming

Starving hungry, surrounded by death.

All I see is red.

My poem is from the point of view of a slave on a slave ship. It is based on some of  the language from an extract from the war poem, Auschwitz by Elizabeth Weyser. It is quite repetetive to create a tense, shocking atmosphere. The colour red runs through the poem with the idea of blood, danger and death.