To The Two Thousand

Dedicated to the two thousand recently murdered by Boko Haram in Nigeria. No act of religion and no act of an evil ‘other’. Just a reaction by the same voices as echo across the rest of the world, those who seek to divide, suppress and control humanity in the service of their own brutal ideals. No to Fascism, whatever language it dresses itself in. No pasaran.

Two thousand mouths thrown open
two thousand screams escaped
two thousand lives are ended
two thousand lost in hate
and that ringing in your eardrums
that whining buzz of pain
isn’t a delusion
and it isn’t all your blame

It isn’t the cost of action
not yours at least, not mine
but a visceral reaction
to an ever clouding line
between the normal and the madness
which the hateful call divine
which the wealthy chalk to profit
which the powerful refine

No, the outcomes of these stories
the tales of the dead
are the completion of a saga
that to most is too well read
The fallout of a long war
for money and for claims
for greed and pride and envy
a never-ending source of pain

But your parents didn’t write it
no more than theirs or mine
and we do nothing to invite it
though we despair in the decline
the sins of those two thousand
innocent for sure
are the same as all the living
seldom greater, rarely more

We lay the blame on others
as the death rattle descends
ignoring that cruel handful
who blur the human lens
whose iron fists and golden wants
scrawled chaos on the earth
and whose actions we’ve been blind to
too busy trapped in birth

But the two thousand deserve better
than another round of hate
too late to saves their lives now,
too late to change their fate
but the pen it is still moving
the last chapters yet undone
and through a human effort
paragraphs may be undone

So grab your pen and paper
lay down all of your blame
set your eyes on all the guilty minds
force on them all their shame

Make the bastards pay back
for all they’ve said and done
for the Empires that defined us
for the firing of each gun
because two thousand deserve better
before this story’s done
and it’s our hands that have to write it
a better ending
for all
not just for some

Leave a comment