No happy rememberance day BULLshite...

This is not a poem.

I don't have lyrical poetics in me where this is concerned.

I don't have rhythmic spoken words I can use to impress or sway.

I have rage. I have fear. I have hopelessness. I have anxiety.

I have survival skills I need to learn and quick cuz the wars will eventually reach these shores.

This is not a poem. This is not a fucken poem. I don't have a beautiful poem.

I have spitting mad fury. I have stress and strain and tears and shit and piss.

I have no poetry.

I have borrowed memories of innocent blood shed.

I have pictures of warlords and their minions I want to make into dart boards so I can teach my children a new game.

Pin the tail on the idiot.

Pin the tail on the donkey.

Pin the tail on the fools who will dance on all our graves.

This is not a poem this is not a poem this is not a poem this is not a poem

This is not a poem. PERIOD!

Do not tell me my words are powerful.

Do not ask me how I learned to break my own silence and speak so forcefully.

Do not ask me if english is my mother tongue.

Do not tell me about your favourite kewl Black spoken word artist

Or ask me if I know your favourite Black woman writer's works

Do not clap.

Do not be enterfuckingtained.

Do not even be edutained.

Do not make this about your fear and unwillingness to free your mind.

Do not tell me about how intimidated I make you feel.

Instead be ignited. Be incited. Be enraged. Be transformed.

Move from right to left.

Move your politically apathetic lazy lacking in consciousness ass.

Move your mind.

Don't sit still.

Don't debate with me.

Don't invite me to see the malignant other side.

Don't. Just Don't!

Fuck Remembrance day.

Challenge revisionist ahistory.

Question propaganda.

Contextualize professionally trained uniformed minionized killers chosen from the ranks of the oppressed and dispossessed.

Fucking spit on warlords, greedy imperialists and insatiable corporations who, with the help of the media attempt to brainwash us and our children into believing that all wars are for the protection and collective good of human kind.

Fuck their lies.

Damn them to hell.

This is not a lovely poem.

This is not beauty.

This is not honourable or necessary or the right thing to do.

This is war.

Death. Hate. Lies.

- signed angry terrified fucking pissed off darkie gyal

I was searching for a poem I remembered reading a few years back when I came across this...

Three cold words foretold our connection.
I remember how they stopped me,
no breath, no movement,
As I heard the march of history
repeating.
Storm troopers in the streets,
gas canisters falling
into darkened rooms,
fires burning,
the people, naked and afraid
begging for mercy and none came.
Three cold words:
New - world - order.
Iraqi women,
You are not my enemy.
I do not choose to be yours.
Madmen play their killing games
with the bodies of our children.
Only money matters, and oil,
and power.
We have none of these.
We have fragile life giving bodies.
We have faint hope and soulful prayers:
May someone's god stop the terror,
stop the torture,
stop the death squads.
Any merciful god will do

by Nicole Grant

51 years old
Edgewood, KY

I am a mother of 4 children; stepmother of 2; grandmother of 10. I am a writer, a sociologist, and I oppose this war!!