Social commentary

 

An SOS from the frontier.

 

This is a message from the borderlands

an endless void a windswept land

like all deserts stripped bare of features.

So I whisper the message if you could have heard

all that I’ve heard. If you could see all that I’ve seen

if you could have been there, far out there and if you

could have listened to peoples words, listened to those

broken hurting people and that place out there, in here,

in me, in you. The dark frontier, that secret place you know

I know, we know, we all know, but deny its existence.

(excerpt)

 

RAC

Excuse me poets

Tribute to Orlando

 

And so the wise

Write

Bland words

Clever words

But men and women

Have died

So they

These Sunday painters

Argue

About the style

The poetics

The rhyme

Whether children

Could have done better

But men and women

Have died

There is something

Missing

A loose connection

Technique

Fuck technique

Fuck if it’s

a quick response

Men and women

Have died

write something

about

what’s happened

don’t write

about grammatics

write about loss

write about love

write about grieving

that we

have come to this

write about

men and women

Have died

 

Murder of an activist

Dress it up whichever way

what it breaks down to

is the senseless murder

of a woman by a man.

Senseless the loss

Senseless the pain

The resort to violence

The resort to hate

And the mindless murder

Of a defenceless mother.

 

Whichever way it breaks down

Its male violence again.

 

RAC

The slaying of an activist

 

No accusations

Of responsibility

No recriminations

No blame

Or shame

Not yet

Reality

We are all

Complicit

We’ve all

Listened

To the messages

Of hate

Dressed up

As political

Arguments

We’ve listened

But not objected

To the racist

Commentary

Dressed up

And called

Immigration

Or the hatred

Towards the poor

And those

Hanging on

To the bottom rung

That hatred

Ever present

Sometimes

Not even said

This move

To extremes

With people

Who should know

Much better

Stoking

The fire

Of emotions

That vilify

And make

it easier

far far easier

to pick up a gun

or a blade

and kill.

But I wonder

Did it make

A difference

That she was

A woman

And small.

But she is dead

And her children

Motherless.

And we must all

Ask ourselves

What will we do

Different.

What will we do

So that we remember

Our complicity.

 

 

RAC