I heard the news today and felt the tangles
of words and pictures of guilt and shame,
hiding the bald truth beneath polite pretence,
running a video of the violence of a nation,
to deceitfully thwart recognition of their own.
—–
A child has died, the police convict parents,
and so the drip feed wounds us, calls us out,
to feel the pain this one neglected child while
they silence the horror of hundreds that die
each hour, every minute with emptied eyes.
——
A tiny body buried under a bomb struck home,
a body brutalised by violation and sexualisation,
a small emaciated form in a desert landscape
where rain once fell and now brown sand blows.
——
Like the opened talons and sharp beak, headlines
pose like soaring eagles gazing from lofty heights
to find their prey, devouring the mouse who dares
show their face and questions their right to hun
