it is very clear…ALL LIVES MATTER
should be a decal on bombers and drones
with small print below
*unless we can make money by killing you*
then there is the matter of *to insure domestic tranquility*
another laugh riot
we of *high born order*
plan to stay that way
as more become aware of the cabal of (rulers)
they (the cabal) must gin up more dissent and anger
to keep Scrooge McDuck’s vault full
the current rash of protest is not Anti-Amercian
as Trump + Limbaugh would have you think
it is simply
HOW MUCH LONGER IS THIS SHIT GONNA GO ON

That day my mother binds my hair tight with a bone comb,
and places a red scarf around my neck.
So I don’t lose you, she says.

Sung in German, his language
one I slightly know
the anger of the mob, a people led
by men who feared loss of power
to reject an innocent man
who’d helped and taught love.

Knowledge of another’s language
culture and beliefs: brings understanding
no matter what his colour, status
or the culture, country where he flies from
or still strives to live.

If all men could learn from others
the stranger on your road
then no leader would have power
to bring men to hate or war.

There would be no enemy
no one to despise
we’d understand each other
no matter what the dress or voice
or where we live or worship
or even what we eat.

Then we’d be each other’s brothers
and sisters, forever joined in harmony.

I remember when the space was fenced, a home for rats
a steel fenced scar cutting through the “saved” houses
and above the concrete bulk of the new urban motorway.

They built towers on the space replacing the erased homes
by sky streets, homes for the poor, without gardens
for children to play, adults relax. Some left in fear for the future.

Slowly the area changed, the skilled artisans, labouring builders
migrated home or died, the “saved” houses became “desirable”
and celebrities, bankers, politicians moved in to homes built
a century ago for aspiring families or newlyweds.

It became “Notting Hill” though the hill was far away!

Today the News has resurrected Ladbroke Grove
for the poor have been killed in Grenfiell Tower
and they can’t call this carnage “Notting Hill”!!

Media  tries to convey the horror, tears of the displaced
survivors of the inferno, searching for family lost in…

Thanks to the poets whose poems piled in after last month’s KPAI — keep them coming.  This has enabled me to produce another instalment in the middle of a rushed and busy month — what’s new, poets? And you relax and question, draw pebbles, write sestinas, make collages, wonder about the triumph of evil (Moriarty), and concentrate on the timelessness of stone. Thanks to Morelle Smith, Maggie Mackay, Stephen Mead, David Whippman and Joan Lennon.

To contribute, send previously published poems (published at least three years ago) to which you hold the copyright, by email to sally evans 35 at gmail dot com.

You may send your own images, otherwise I will find suitable copyright-free illustrations, which I quite enjoy doing.  Sometimes it is a challenge. Morelle Smith and Joan Lennon sent their own illustrations for their poems, as well as the collages from Stephen Mead.

I should add that…