Auckland Poetry.com

Not a Victim

It is important for me to begin my day by not
feeling guilty or inferior for what happened
when I was a child; abuse, those grasping hands
I should have pulled a way, didn’t -out of fear-
but I also wished to please an adult world.

It is important for me to believe this every day
and not let the past break me down into despair
and hate them, for they are dead and lived a life
of little moral value; but I must be unafraid and
forgive myself for what was done to me.

Gun Culture.

They teased the black teenager in the school yard,
his older twin sisters went to university and dated
white boys; he had lost street credibility and respect.
“So he bought himself a gun” as the song goes, four
bullets too. Next day at school when one of the boys
taunted him he pulled out his gun and shot him three
times in the chest.

So much blood coming out of the shot boy’s mouth;
so much noise he couldn’t hear, he ran and ran didn’t
know where; into a park where a blizzard of autumn
leaves fell and he was lost in a world of delusion.
“They will respect me, look up to me, I’m their hero,”
he said to the trees, one bullet left he shot himself in
the head, empty gun and end of dreams.

The Politics of the Ridicules

Dear teacher, from Liverpool, going to work in Sudan and
let the children at your school call a teddy bear Muhammad.
Didn’t you know you’re dealing with bigots scouring texts
to find an excuse to say that Europe has insulted them again?

You are amongst people, who are three centuries behind us,
and in no hurry catching up. Odin is the name of my cat, and
that’s also the name of Iceland’s god, I better be careful when
going to Reykjavik on my holiday next year.