Routine Killings
To not talk about murder and enslavement
forced abortion and migration
The closing in of gangs shootings, the bombings of homes and hospitals
The Yemenis hollowed out by years of famine,
The luckier ones flee from Hell
just to land on Purgatory—
of what wrong have they done?
Quivering on an overcrowded boat
their lives fastened on a thin hope
Praying for mercy from the angry waves
Greeted by cold suspicion, from the moment of landing
A people unwelcomed, unnamed,
better be without
No refuge for the displaced from Khartoum
No human rights for the dehumanised Rohingya
Is a choice.
No politics in our art is a political choice.
The beggar we avoid
Homeless in one’s homeland
His eyes meeting glittered sandals, polished toenails, creamed leather brogues
A hard and smooth Selfridges bag.
The feel-bads keep their heads down, hastily off
a pram with shoppings ran over a corner of his cardboard
The mother didn't see him
Apathy manifests as cruelty
every day, on and on
Girls from Aleppo, languish, dust caked, sunken cheeks
squat in an alley with their malnourished mum
Boys screaming inside, gagged by daily brutality
Bodies blasted to pieces, bullets lodged into a skull, warm blood oozing out
So pick up a machine gun
Shoot the tremble out of his head
Being a solider is a lifeline
To kill is to live for another day
It's a choice
To make
Abstract patterns in our art,
just because.
There's no just because.
Beauty without context
clean of human experience
is a political choice.