I Seek Sanctuary

“Paradise found” she said.
And everyone laughed.
Here, how, no way
They sneered, looking down
on their town, where unity
once lived, beyond religion.
They all sat down, and spoke
together with respect, with care
about the people there, in the
past, future possibilities
redeemed, of a dream,
of a memory reborn
and a land brought to life
Heavenly voices sharing
messages of love
from above, a return
of a place, a heavenly space
Back to Eden, the message
now in, Paradise found.

My message is this. 

I am watching you

This is all wrong

I shouldn’t be writing this,

I should be exploring the frontiers

On the other side of imagination

Yet you all come to us radicals

For inspiration

How dare you?

You have stolen my ideas,

And my motherhood

With your empty promises

Of emancipation.

Yet I am one of the lucky ones.

People are suffering

People are dying

And our political system is collapsing

We are in the middle of a mass extinction

And all you can talk about is limits

and fairy tales of a brainwashed generation.

How dare you?

For more than 10 years

The signs have been crystal clear.

How dare you continue to look away?

And come here saying this is radical

While people face starvation.

You say you hear us

And that you understand

the urgency of this situation

But no matter how sad and angry I am

I do not want to believe that,

Because if you really understood

And continued to look away

You would be evil

And that, I refuse to believe.

I do not accept your prescription

of what a radical mind must say

I do not accept your rulebook

And choose to walk away

From a climate of crisis

And winning this prize

But I implore you to look

At the truth before your eyes.

A war on the poor

lies outside your door

universal credit

a dignity deficit

the poverty premium

the price we’re forced to pay

our lives, our dreams,

all washed away. 

This poem and a few others were inspired by a poetry competition looking for entries from radical minds that set very strict parameters on what the topics were to be. As a free-spirited being with a lot to say I decided against entering but still wrote a few poetic responses. I’m busy clearing up my laptop at the moment, but will try and remember to come back and add links to the other connected poems. Thanks for all the recent likes and follows, it’s been great to get some time to finally be posting again. Every like and every follow is truly appreciated.

Virtue signalers
Get lost
In the pages of
History unread
Until you must
Or lose trust
In your self
Or your cell
Contained behind
Walls of silence
Built of guilt
Condemned to suffer
In silence
For fear
Of the shadow
inside your mind.