"They've asked for a blog on protest poetry, I've written a polemic."
Click yourself on
Find your simmer
Turn it high
Now, write.
Greenpeace just asked me -
‘whether there are any other issues that concern me.’
I can’t say no.
So, retort,
‘rent and avocados and coffee.’
It’s too deep for an online survey – ask the click questions
yes/no closed questions
you write the choices and I agree, I mean
is this a trick?
This ‘help us help you’ question
believing that a remote opening of this mail-
out should be enough of a donation.
What do you want from me!?
Of course there are.
Seriously!
What bigger symptom of powerlessness is there than to huff at a charity that wants to save
the world?
Haven’t they earnt my concern?
Don’t you want to save our world?
Perhaps I should protest myself,
strike my face to wake my brain to this dark age,
march spears across skin numb to believing that this is humans killing themselves
that we live in the chaos of suicide
that our rivers are arrested
that our oceans are mourning
that our trees are chain-smoking
that none of those belong to us
our possessive adjectives can’t save us.
How is this a protest?
A placard poem
A free write march
An isolated share and crucified post
Star of David in the infinity of Goliath
I'm going off-piste
They've asked for a blog on protest poetry, I've written a polemic.
What is a protest?
Is it an awareness campaign? Is it a banner of what we want instead? Is it a rave? Is it a local
store, a bed sheet slogan from an estate marked for capital? Is it a palace in a shop doorway?
A squat, a ticket tout? A shoplifter? A fare jumper, fraud
or is it silence? Is it turning your face for each slap? Is it gluttony, leaving the tap to run?
Accumulation and hoarding, refusing to die, a flag, a soundbite, a vote? Surely protest has
failed its terms. Surely it's not an ideal candidate for this job of activation.
Accept the loss.
Hold your power.
There’s a little bit of border in all of us
manifested as decisions with enough shame to self-destruct.
Find the source of this truth,
the part of you which twitches at the barrage of syllables
Click yourself on
Find your simmer
Turn it high
This gauge instinctively lowers itself in its own time
The flow of thought will collide and console its selves in neural paths
Now, write.
Courageous visibility
of heart blood
to gather in chambers
to give, to receive,
to come, to go
to love and be love.
I delete the retort of ‘poverty, water and energy sources.’
My greatest concern:
We don’t believe that humans are capable of creating this.
