I don’t remember standing in line with my hands held open,

a wooden bowl and half gnawed wooden spoon, chewed and nibbled at,

distressed over not through hunger but through fucking pain…

but I’m not meant to talk about it, complain or discuss it because

it shows a weakness, it shows lack of moral fibre that my great-grandfather’s

generation would have called Victorian values…the same Victorian

values employed that never allowed a heartbroken woman to grieve properly,

that allowed a monster onto the streets of Whitechapel

and to disappear into the night like a phantom…but we don’t talk about that

because it displays a morbid curiosity…

We do not talk about what is wrong about the way a million people

and a million people more are abused by a system that rewards

lying thieving mother fucking bastards in sharp suits and the power

of manipulation, and when we do strike up the balls to ask the simplest

of questions, we are patted upon the head and told, you wouldn’t understand…

worse, worse, worse still the party statement comes out on the news at ten,

that we should draw a line under it now, well fuck you …but we don’t talk about it.

I don’t remember being apologised to when after all the years I dealt with pain

to be repeatedly told it was in my brain and in the brains of millions of others too,

that I should carry that bale a thousand yards and then you complain when I stoop,

or was that your plan, easier to kick me in my balls when I can’t fight back.

I don’t remember being asked my opinion on why a politician needs more money than God

to offer the same opinion I offered without needing  a consultation fee

and a permanent secretary

to type up my words…but we don’t talk about any of that.

So what do we do, what do we talk about if not each other,

the latest who killed who, snogged who, butchered who, made mistakes of, crowned who

all is noise in the end, just so we miss out on reality,

a world that that has been compromised,

a world that doesn’t hear the cries

of the unborn

but who is ready to sell their futures to the highest bidder

to generate money to spread amongst those evil enough

to take candy from a baby, medication from the poor

the homes from the desperate, the need for more and more

the bones from our body, the soil from our feet

the happiness from our souls, the thought and tainted heartbeat…

…But we don’t talk about it.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015