Memorial to Tanya Burr, killed 15 September 2002

Poem from the Glovebox of a Dead Car

Tonight (6 June 2007) as we prepared my sister's old Toyota Corolla to go for scrap tomorrow, we decided we should give it one last looking over to make sure there was nothing left that we wanted. We looked in the glovebox and discovered that it was still full of rubbish, as well as assorted old cassettes and a number of plastic toy soldiers. The car had been unused since 2003 and so theoretically everything of value should have been long gone.

We bundled up the items from the glovebox and took them into the back porch of my sister's house (which we are cleaning out for re-renting) where we could sort them out in the light. One item caught our eye. It was a somewhat scruffy typed letter that had handwriting on the back. The handwriting was the poem below. The typed letter, meanwhile, was dated 17 September 2002 - two days after Tanya was murdered. At the moment we don't know who wrote it, although my nephew drove the car at the time.

Post Script: My aforementioned nephew Raymond Mills subsequently recognised it as one he'd written.

Human Detritus

What causes all of this?

Blood spilled meaninglessly

Killed for a joyride

Bloody murder committed daily

Life lost, life wasted, love destroyed

Child killers who blame society

Victims more than the deceased

More pain than just a stab can do

More damage than can be inflicted with a knife

What Human Detritus exists today?

What the fuck is this world coming to?

Where is the reason?

Is there no sense?

Does humanity have no future?