If it helps you classify me, then by all means tie

an armband with a yellow star around my biceps

and shoot me down with a ravenous bully boy glee upon

your myopic thousand yard stare, which in reality matches the

colour of your eyes as they glaze over as I answer your questions

as I think of the day when I will forgive you.

 

It will burn you alive and if it helps in your suffering,

I shall wear armbands all the way down my naked torso

for what else is knowledge of a family tree for except for others

to label you with every known concept or pseudo-scientific conceit

and say with aching certainty, well he deserved it then.

 

I see your three points and multiply them

as the conversation withers and wanes, waxes and accuses.

For it doesn’t take a foul black shirt on you in which to raise the anger

dwelling in me and yet I know I shall pardon you for you are

mindless and without control, the parasite of which freedom suffocates and dies.

 

I shall not wear a triangle with shame and perhaps

a yellow star is not enough seeing as my great-grandmother

is in my tree, perhaps I should also wear with pride green for those

who found themselves wandering in the bush and pink

for those who didn’t and Red, bright bullish and provocative red for the blood spilt.

 

I should certainly wear Blue, for as the son of Cornwall

my guilt by association as far back as knowing there is Nordic

and Norman Dukes, Scottish Kings and a grandfather who talked

longingly of Canada, I am pure 100 percent mongrel

and I will bite and snarl if you put me down like a dog in a pound.

 

I will don Black for the beer and whisky I have dispatched, a symbol of my

Pacifism, not just a white feather pinned to my back and who

in the modern age has not prostituted themselves

intellectually to fight the good fight and the lest said about

our dependence on drugs keeping us alive.

 

I will wear black also for being a poet,

not considered that part of the rainbow, but I like to stir

it up when confronted by stupidity. I will wear pink because

how could I not, loving so many that would embrace their feelings

as I embrace and enjoy the touch of many a woman’s lips.

 

In fact, as you line me up against a wall, the holes splintering

from bullets worn, phone for a tailor in a back street Polish shop

and get his Roma employee to deliver me a veritable multi coloured

rainbow outfit for me to wear infront of you,

you choose which colour you want to hit first.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015