Knowledge And Power
If only we’d known, they said
when the inmates of Belsen
were first seen
in their
deliberately
ill-fitting
striped pyjamas
dying from starvation,
dying from torture
dying from cold,
dying from illness,
dying
dying
dying.
If only we’d known, they said
when the extermination camps
were discovered,
the gas chambers,
the slave labour camps
where inmates were
killed
by over-work,
killed
by malnutrition
killed
by disease.
Exterminated.
If only we had known, they said,
there would have been no appeasement,
no ‘peace in our time’ self-protection,
no treaties for self-preservation,
no deals done in self-defence.
With the knowledge
intervention would have happened
genocide been prevented
if only we’d known.
Well this time we knew.
This time
we knew from the beginning.
This time
we knew from before the beginning,
from long before the beginning
about the intimidation,
the arbitrary arrests,
homes demolished,
the camps filled
with innocents
left to die
from starvation,
illness or cold
or killed by torture.
Citizens bombed to death.
Nothing left but rubble.
No one left in the rubble.
And so we acted
to send arms
the perpetrators.
First published in Culture Cult Genocidal Anthology, March 2025
Nothing
In those streets
of men and boys,
in that country
for men and boys,
she feels like a person with no face,
her face space covered,
her identity occupied
by a swirling mist of confusion
like nothingness being born.
Sometimes
she wishes for a blank space
that she could fill herself
with a Magritte apple
or even a woman
even herself
un-blanked
and visible.
Now, in those streets
of men and boys,
in that country
for men and boys,
she feels like a person with no voice,
Magritte’s apple is choking her,
muting her
so even in her home she whispers
her songs and curses.
Only in her head does she shout
that something will come of nothing,
that something must come of nothing.
First published in New Verse News, August 28 2024
RIP John Donne
No man is an island wrote Donne
centuries ago.
He understood the predicament
understood
that man, or woman
is one part
of a whole
which is one part
of something larger
and so on
into mind-blowing infinity.
No man, or woman can stand alone
and reach their potential
in isolation
or when isolated
on some small island
however grandiose
the delusion.
An island alone cannot thrive,
except here in Britain of course,
so it was once said by some.
And now,
what now
when it stands
triangulated
in the centre
of three egos,
Trump, Putin
and Zelensky.
Stuck in the middle
of such super egos,
TPZ Keir Starmer.
First published in New Verse News, March 3 2025
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