TAKE THIS BORDER.

There are those who guard gates like coffins,

others, plant seeds in the soil.

Politicos do the former,

polishing padlocks with fear,

selling the chain as a gift to the loyal.

.

He names ‘illegal’ as if holy scripture,

tattoos deport on the nation’s tongue.

His tweets march in formation

detain, return, remove

the vocabulary of a siege,

the diction of a gun.

.

Please,

take this border he builds in your mind,

the one which you must cross to be kind.

Instead, let the line be a bridge wide enough for song,

a threshold where bread is shared,

and strangers step into welcome.

.

He won’t speak of the doctor from Lagos

who stitches the wounds his budgets cut,

or the Kurdish chef whose bread

feeds mouths left hungry

when wages were as useful as dust.

.

Their stories are smothered

under headlines stamped criminal,

as if humanity needs permission to exist.

He casts himself as saviour,

our nation’s night-watchman,

but the lamp he carries

burns only in one direction,

a flare for the far right,

lighting their path to power

with his shadows.

.

Please,

take this fear he pours in your cup,

and tip it back into his eyes.

Instead, drink from the well of each other,

where one hand holds another steady,

and no child thirsts alone.

.

He knows the old trick:

find an enemy you can touch,

and the crowd will forget

the thieves in the counting house,

the landlords fattening on rent,

the pension shrunk to a riddle,

the hospital queue that shuffles into next year.

.

So he drills the word illegal

into the skull of the nation

until the only law we hear

is the one that says keep out.

This is not protection.

It is a pickpocket’s distraction

a border drawn to hide the vault,

a wall raised to mask the rot.

.

Please,

take this fortress he calls fair play,

and tear out its foundations.

Instead, raise a hall where voices mingle,

a square where work and laughter

are the only passports we need.

.

We are not safer, we’re reduced.

We are smaller and confused.

And the only boats he keeps afloat

are the ones that carry his lies.

______________________________________________

WAR:

The Art of Burying the Many for the Ambition of the Few… or ‘Missiles Travel Faster than Wisdom.’

.

I have watched three quarters of a century turn,

Cold War winters, jungles burn;

Vietnam’s ghosts, Iraq’s refrain,

Afghanistan’s familiar pain.

Each war was sold with flags unfurled,

A tidy script to save the world;

Yet rubble answers every claim

While grief remains without a name.

.

“Shock and Awe,” the banners cry,

A fireworks show across the sky;

The graphics glow, the pundits grin,

The missiles start the show within.

But somewhere far from studio light

A schoolyard meets the edge of night;

A desk, a book, a child’s small hand

Their deaths replace the lesson planned.

.

The briefings say it must be done,

The maps are neat, the targets run;

Yet history, patient and severe,

Has seen this theatre year by year.

Vietnam whispered, You will learn.

Iraq replied, You did not learn.

Afghanistan, with weary breath,

Confirmed the syllabus of death.

.

Kill a tyrant, bomb a gate,

Ideologies replicate;

Martyrs bloom where missiles fall,

And vengeance answers every call.

.

Faceless planners talk of strategy,

Of corridors and legacy;

But graves arrive before the cause,

Unmoved by speeches or applause.

.

And always, always, profit grows.

Where contracts blossom after blows;

The Few grow wealthy, safely far,

While Many pay the price of war.

.

I look across a restless sea

And wonder what we choose to be:

A species clever, fierce, and proud,

Or stupidly violent, empty and loud.

.

For all our science, all our art,

We’ve never learned the hardest part:

The world need not be lost this way,

War is a choice we make each day.