Love Is Lost

I Am Not A Hero

I wrote this to remember the anniversary of Mark Duggan's death. I hope it resonates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCmh5wyy_k&t=21s

Words:

August 2011, youths everywhere took to the streets with a page on Britain's history and spoke in the only language to which it listens
Violence

And it happened

It happened because we are failed
Failed by teachers, failing in failing schools
Blazers to indoctrinate in the tie and suit
Whilst academies are daycares for the damned-to-be
And estates are cells with stairs that take you up then bring you down
Steps to depression, too high to touch the skies
The news says those estates are ganglands
Governed by thugs
And it makes no sense
Isn't this country the same, where leaders decide rules that do not rule them
Death to enemies but they call it 'ill' in police custody
And taxes on the poor are little more than thuggish extortion, leaving us cold
The hottest summer - rage rising

It happened because he grew up a stain in a neoliberal myth but there are no money trees for shade or shelter
Apparently accidentally
Grenfell burnt to the concrete
The scent of coloured bodies in that southern breeze
Too charred for chalk lines but out on those streets they call it murder 
That's why it's the hottest summer in memory, not because of the sun but sons sent to God
Unable to rise with the sunrise
Too black for cabs so gotta run harder to get somewhere
Whilst athleticism and scholarships are like pathways to something bigger
But rather field to the house
Get there and see - still nigger
The hottest summer - rage rising

It happened because our world is ignored by those above and our prayers don't reach our Lord
Or Lords
And there's nothing common about commons - they're more inclined to grow the column of the damned
See our rage on the screens, us screaming for peace, but they hear black noise
We're just bees on the edges of our poisoned hives but our queens were not blessed with wealth but still turned what little social currency into a beautiful commodity, taught me melanin is not an oddity
Cause our queens carried quivers, quick firing shots to oppression and carrying quills to narrate the progression yet dealt the coldest selection
The hottest summer - rage rising

It happened because
She is still boxed in, double threat to an existence in an Orwellian reality
Cause she knows she gotta triple think, twice lift, for that once upon a time a black girl makes white man money
She gotta triple his experience, twice his years in profession, one more degree
It's only when a  black man dies does the IPCC remember we exist
But who's grieving for my sisters?
Barely a footnote on the funeral programme sheet
Routinely abused by a cruel savage who receives only community service
Injustice is always at our doors like a cold caller
The hottest summer - rage rising

And it happened
This exact week, six years ago, when rebels rose to deliver a haemorrhage to a society that considers them a disease
Roused by an unwilling martyr whose name was Duggan
Raised boxed up by race
Boxed in a hard stop, took two shots now buried in a wood box
Uncorking the bottle that trapped the rage of day
Desire to destroy a society that doesn't see you
He, she, we, us, young, lost, full of mistrust in police
Knowing only regret
What did you expect?
And we're still on the edge
Rest in peace all the victims in Grenfell, torys continue to tear us apart, won't even give us maps for our dead end path
Still treated as stains
One day 2011 might happen again

Rage Rising (Protest)(prod Med Femme)

Alphabet bastardisation
Causing disaster
Expelling flames
(Still) growing hotter

O Ògún (Prelude)

Rum drinking
poetically ranting
black lipped
no swag having

email @ poeticogun@gmail.com
fb @ https://www.facebook.com/ogunpoeticking