Form 696 by Des Mannay

I am not a silent poet

I’m rich – but in ways that rich people don’t understand,

when we fight back we have to link hands.

My boss keeps tellin’ me to work harder:

I’m running on empty – no food in the larder.

..

Work is a prison – without release.

Form 696: intimidation – we get no peace

and 666 is the number of the beast,

turn it upside down and you get the police.

..

We’re supposed to mourn Blakelock but forget Blair Peach.

Justice: a concept that’s just out of reach –

look at all the black deaths in cells,

if cops come in behind a mattress, then you get hell

..

The original Black Death was spread by rats,

now they’re in a uniform – and that’s a fact Jack.

Estates across England, Scotland and Wales

now party with Molotov cocktails

..

When you attack our music – you build unity,

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Fly-Tipping Point by Marc Woodward

I am not a silent poet

This is where we sit to watch the night come in
ever since Trumputin bombed our English towns.
We emptied freezers, ate our neighbours pets.
Now in the bird-settling, when once we sat down

to be tamed by tv shows we can’t recall,
we recline here and watch the weeds approach
knowing soon their rope will be a ligature
that tightly winds itself around our throats.

..

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To name but a few by Pamela Ireland Duffy

I am not a silent poet

(To the proprietors of the pro-Brexit press, sundry trolls, and anyone else who tells me to shut up and get over it.)

Don’t tell me how to love

the country of my birth

don’t tell me that to love my country

I must be like you

and not like me

Don’t tell that you built my country

on your wealth

or won my country on the battlefield

Your wealth was stolen from the womb

of mother Africa

plundered from other homelands

painted red and called The Empire.

My country was not won

in far-off lands

where brave men paid the price

of madmen’s sins

My country was woven in the mills of Lancashire

from cotton picked by brothers and sisters

some called slaves,

and hewn in darkness down the pit

by coalminers

My country was carried on the backs

of common labourers

forged in the sweat of steel-workers

and fed…

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Augury by Charley Reay

I am not a silent poet

Their ladders ain’t for us to climb, we don’t have the money

to waste.  Some things are simply beyond our power,

our weapons are the subtle charms of the fairer sex.

Leave it for the men to make their declarations, fight their war –

as bright as a nuclear flash, and just as toxic.

We will care for one another, patch their wounded masculinity

hold the threads of civilization

by the force of our will

The summer of the Age of Man soon

enough, my dear, will turn to fall.

..

Charley Reay is a writer and spoken word artist from the Lincolnshire Fens.  She is currently based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, where she has lived for almost a decade.  Her poems have been published by Obsessed With Pipework, 3 Drops from a Cauldron and Writers Against Prejudice.  She is also a regular performer on the North East spoken word…

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Eyes by Abdel-Ati Jamil; Translated by Abdel-Ilah Sahafi

I am not a silent poet

I love

your eyes.

Your eyes

hate to look at

the dictator’s features.

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