Month: January 2021

FGM

My mother was the knife

that took it from me.

She wielded it as it had been

     for her and the others. Held

———————————————

me down as I screamed.

‘Don’t let them do it, Mummy!

Please! Please! Don’t.

Stop it! Mummy! Til 

—————–

they stuffed my mouth and 

then my eyes bulging in terror,

continued to torture me.

—————

I screamed at the gags,

at the excruciating pain.

They, ignored my struggles,

knowing full well what they were taking.

—

They cut and sewed, 

sealing a future for me

where I’d spend my

whole life 

infected, 

scarred, 

stitched,

stifled,

suffering,

to satisfy men.

Deaf to the oppressed.

Are you listening? A lonely voice

echoes off the cliffs of fixed ears

that will only hear if its tune fits.

—

They called over and over, hoping

in vain for the murmuring of many

distant voices that crowded around,

to tune out nuisance noise; to make 

a dent in the deepening declivity

of intentions over obsessions, 

which crowd out the loudest of

SOS’s and turns them into the

long ago cries that went nowhere.

—–

A shoulder was tapped, and eyes

were turned, to see past the person

and used machinations to avoid

attentions, and where solidly their  

intention was to shield their eyes, and 

close their minds from changing.

Forcing the silenced to grieve. Their 

loss of a voice voiding their existence.

Where Land is Rare

I stood on the cliffs and looked out to blue, blue sea,

the bobbing boats with lines and nets in the bounty.

——-

An innocence spread out on the tortured ruins below

the rippling waves where we came too    late, too       slow. 

–

Heard the bells of the churches and cathedrals calling

‘neath the waves in sadness and sorrow and raw regret.

–

I heard the bells of bicycles and front doors and a sound

of the clocks, that ticked away the rising waters of ice

–

melt, as the sun’s strength grew, and indecisive leaders

tried, and Canute like, failed to turn the trespassing tide.

–

I watched folk, weighed down with a silvery, fish catch,

as they carried their boxes up the fresh cut, cliff steps.

–

I laid a hand on my swelling tide of my own and felt

the hoped for baby tumbling beneath my trembling hands.

—

The heat of the sun bore down on us both and I turned

to return to the city, with its ancient walls, where windows

—

looked once on rolling fields; now upon rising tumbling waves.

An ancient settlement. Where fish are plenty but land is rare.

Goodness Sown

Politics is the name but man

-ipulation the game as they 

have learned to use our 

prejudices against us,

leaning on us like toppling

trees to sway our thinking and

blow away our morality.

Murdoch has tumbled the

———————

numbers to open he safe, of

sanity and pushed the news

into his own road. And it rises

to meet the crowds listening.

Like a torrent it washes their

minds with the sewage of

racism, misogyny and the

exploitation of small children.

————-

Television has fallen to their

wolflike wiles; and promotes

government biased propaganda,

while those in charge pour 

our economy into the drain

of their utter incompetence.

The evil that they do lives

long after them and the good

is oft crushed to build an empire.

———

Are we a thin voice in a 

                             wilderness?

or do we work alongside others?

Avaaz, Amnesty, Tear Fund, 

Faith groups , Greta and great,

egregious heroes that shame 

their lies, build bulwarks against 

a base enemy as they battle

to break bonds and broker change. 

—————–

There is 

mighty good my friends, and

we reap what we sow.

A Moment of Grace

For a moment it blazed across the sky,

deep rubies, amethyst and gold as

the sun sank below the sea leaving

me. I looked and saw through the 

colours into a lit space where all

was possible beyond imagining,

For a moment time stopped. 

Then the sun sank and darkness

collected around me – yet still I

carried the glow in my heart, despite

that blanketed breaking night.

==============

A fragile glow, a moment of 

      grace in the face of grief

and loss as the world turns on

its own, destroying the sunrise

over battered broken tree stumps,

children begging for a safe place

and guns being fired on the innocent

while governments manipulate and destroy

but still within. An eternal flame.

Help! Look what’s happened!

O phial from astra Zeneca we adore you,

the first drops made in Europe 

delayed

by ports and threats and paperwork.

Millions more expected, so they say

as they sit around a table and nod

their heads with Eton wisdom, while

thousands and thousands and more

sicken daily, and a thousand and more

die from a disease limited as much

as the Canute faced, ocean tide.

=========

We play hide and seek with a 

ranging minotaur while some 

take their lead from a leader who 

behaves as if life is all a prank, so

they party and prance around as if

they are the only ones who matter.

Self-centred, egotistically bound

they carpet their parties with the

dead, the sick and the grieving. But

no one sees or notices the old lady

dying from a virus in her own room.

===========

And watching the 

Icarus antics in the cabinet room,

they swerve away from common 

sense, and dutifully fulfil the will 

of those

taking the excuse to erode the hard

won rights of women, children and

increase the burden on the struggling,

and see their own untaxed moneys 

grow into mountains the sick carry.

A Woman’s Choice

She peeled back her skin and saw

that she was raw material for a 

marketing machine that would

make a fortune in denying the

fragile existence of a woman 

because she was fitted out in

the wrong covering. 

——

Leaving her tight skin friends

another floated into money by

stripping out her stomach and

pretending that her body was

a robot’s by oiling the joints

with the catwalk.

——

They met over a dustbin of lies

where the flies circled the misery

placed on their heads by those

blinded by the balance of funds

and break the beauty and the

gift of those who will die of

the sickness of who they are.