Community Centre

You are born
Maybe against your will
Maybe you fight
Maybe you pick your battles
And still lose
The little piece you kept for yourself,
Everything.

Folks will agree, then bury their noses in screens,
Call you loud, big mouthed and insane
You want to smash every single one of their window panes
And mark a red X on their door, so the whole world will know
That their houses are plagued

If violence is not the answer,
If violence never won a war or women’s rights
Or Freed slaves, or prevented the execution of finite genocide
It’s ok, Theres a new right way
Fill in form 6234A and submit it to a 16 year old intern on minimum wage
That’ll show em
In 30 or so working days, excluding bank holidays

You smashed a glass in the street coming home
No idea where that came from
Life will seem full of inopportune timing
Slipping through cracks made from casts of your own skin
Worries that never come a knocking
Burrowing under you’re home
Until the stench rises

Someone will always put the kettle on
As if increased alertness is a comfort
And they’ll put milk in
Which you never take
But you drink it anyway
Your family has that Irish fire
You convince yourself
Yours is an appropriate rage