Marker

This angry poem needs some work but, whoever and wherever you are, it’s for you, and it needs to go out today. 

Sixteen years today
Sixteen years and grey hairs
Salt me,
Multiple choices mock me:
You’re recategorised.
Never mind,
I think she’d still recognise me.

And I’m joined every year
By more companions-in-grief
Reaching out,
Each one bludgeoned by
All the memories -
Sweet and bitter -
All the feelings -
Hot and cold -
All the exploded notions
Of continuity dashed,
Record houses now ash.

And she’d want to know,
So sometimes I tell her -
Even the things I never could
For fear of her fear,
Cringing from her pain.
And the rage gains ground
On these days,
Teeth worn to stubs where
None can see.

And I’m imagining the talk:
Me trying to outline
What we’ve got now
And what we’ve left behind.
I’m finding modern culture
Quite hard to describe,
Winding fists into
Minefields
In high definition

I’m surrounded by sound -
Some of it music so profound
That I’m lifted higher than
I ever thought I could reach,
And I’m preaching redemption
At every soul:
It gets better.
And it does.

Mummy, I’m a poet now
And yes, I still sing,
And I’m happy in my life,
And I thump drums
To guide others’ footsteps by
And - okay - no child -
But I’m proud of what I’m
Passing on.

But some of the chatter
Is noise for its own sake
And hate still holds sway
In too many hearts
And I worry that we’ve
Parted ways - those who
Sing of common spirit
And those who bang gavels,
Gabbling “common sense”
Rhetoric of division,
Flinging new walls higher

And while people are dying
Others are crying about lions
And decrying the desperate:
Let them eat cake
Let them bake in their own ovens
Let them them scramble and fail
Let them be inconvenient
Let them be the graffiti
On the marble bank fronts,
An affront to propriety,
No ladder for them -
Let them stay right there,
Let them bear the marks of our
Boot heels

We can clean that stain off
We’ve got all the chemicals
You could possibly want
And we’ve dropped taxes
And edited credits
And let everything that was fought for
Be no more than two pages
In a textbook

And look! The cat is dancing
Look! The puppy’s laughing
Look! The meercat’s grip tightens
We’re enlightened -
We’ve got an app for that.

And in the meantime
Changes are grating,
Prating ingrates
Scraping more for themselves
Off others’ plates
And we’ve seen this
Sort of thing before -
We can grade the score,
Draw the lines from
Then through now to
Eventual rebellion
We’ve got to draw lines,
And draw the line.

And I’m so psyched that
Love won,
But there’s still a lot to be done
Like: a metric fuck-ton
When equity is sneered at
As unfair,
Where religions who preach
In love’s name
Declaim against each other
And prop up ancient laws
And pour scorn on
People’s safety.

When rapists of all genders
Are engendered in silence
And nurtured in shame
Where game-players
Rake in cash that must
Make nurses sick.
Where pricks think
That hoisting a hastag
Will make more of a
Difference than this
Fucking poem.

(Because at least it’s more
Than seven score letters
And pre-packaged emotions.)

But you know what will
Make for change?
You know what will
Heal us, make us free?
Actually, it’s not a question:
You know how redemption goes
And how love flows
You know you’ve got to show
That - instead of tribe,
We are a species
Instead of species,
We are creatures
Instead of creatures,
We are the breathing,
Bleeding, needing,
Reaching, yearning,
Learning, teaching,
Evensong of starflesh,
The coalescence of
Scattered suns,
Spun-glass perfection in
Every cell and
We are all relative
And who fights more than
Family?

And that’s why we’re feeling
Jealous, see -
We know that we could have
What’s held up
As aspirations
And we flail at neighbours,
Those within our grasp
And it’s not fair.
I know. It’s not fair.

And maybe we can’t reach
The thieves
Who fleeced us yet,
But we can spend every second
Of the next set of years
Being the people we can be,
Arms hard around each others’
Shoulders, boldly loving
Everyone who needs it,
Staunching those who bleed
Instead of aping eejits
Clenched in greed.

“Pay no attention to them”
My mother always said;
She meant well,
And, to a certain extent,
That works,
But we’ll be cursed
If we let our gaze drift
Too far.
Too long.
Because they’re not them -
They’re us.

This is forty -
Caught up in all the things
I haven’t done
And am still yet-to-do,
Brooding on inequities
But feeling that I’ve got more
Power than at twenty-four,
A bigger voice,
More choices,
And more responsibility
To share out the equity
Of my comfortable life,
Strive for verity,
Stand firm,
And affirm love,
Even to those who have
Eschewed it.

Sixteen years to the day.
You told me you were proud of me.
Now I am too.

(But - like I said -
We’ve got some work to do.)