When I’m out walking late at night
I cut through parks and places with no light
When I’m out walking late at night
I pass parked cars and people having fights
When I’m out walking late at night
I bump into drunks who ask if “I’m all right”
When I’m out walking late at night
the sound of a high-heel shoe doesn’t give me a fright
When I’m out walking late at night
a voice in my head says this aint right
When I’m out walking late at night
I think freedom based on gender is a bag of shite!
My name is john
I am the son of a slave
My father was taken into slavery
At the age of fourteen
Where he was forced to work in a quarry
With other emaciated half starved boys
The quarry was guarded by gunmen
Who played target practice with the exhausted
My father the son of a Chief
Survived by his wits and his strength
When he was liberated he searched for his family
When no trace could be found his liberators offered
To transport him to their island and look after him
Once he got to the island it was to the bleak north
Near a wide river estuary where the winter winds cut to the marrow
in yet another camp enclosed in a fence bedecked with barbed wire
My father thought it strange that the first three letters
of his name matched those of the river?
In time
and on the basis of his forest dwelling history
he was given work with the Forestry Commission
and sent to the borderlands where he was set with the task
of planting thousands of pine trees which he felt
had nothing to do with the word Forestry
at the end of each day
with his overalls smelling of pine
he’d explain it to me
of our ancestry
and what freedom meant
…truly meant….to Freemen and Slavs
via Pennine Chain
one love
WORD!
i
We live in the age of pulling threads,
open colossal cans of worms
which once kept bigotry contained.
We cannot help but hear them spill:
the plop, the seethe and the wriggling
to uncomfortable truths;
we have moved forwards but stepped back.
Our leaders pull threads and get votes,
legitimise bad behaviours
in our pubs, on radio
in the places where we go to work,
on a scale not known for decades.
They split countries 50/50
in ways which once caused civil wars.
ii
There was a film that shocked us, once,
about a nuclear winter
in Sheffield, of all places.
As realistic as it was,
the three-minute generation
were protected by a comfort:
mutually assured destruction,
as cold as a comfort can be
but a comforting deterrent
which is no longer evident
in these days of no trust. Seldom
have we seen such oscillation:
one day leaders threat…
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Had to read and reread again, the richness of imagery is wonderful…a New Years day treat
OneLove
via Unkle Hektor
Source: Unkle Hektor
Source: Chrome Yellow
johnny solstice 