From The River To The Sea

They chant the verse 
And I rehearse
For my own tune to own
My, how the flowers have grown
On this land
Where the empty sand
Used to hold the bones
And the stones
Of what once were homes
Of those who emigrated
Or died in the peat bogs evacuated
And they call it An Ghorta Mhor
But let me whisper to you, a stór
That it was a genocide
As they starved the ones who died
Just so they could export their grain
Grown on a ground green with rain
And the invisible hand
Of economics understand
That you cannot intervene
Or you will shatter the dream
That says that individuality
Brings about the best reality
And is a self balancing axis
Now, we’re watching equivocation pay our taxes
And export our problems to a foreign scene
And there may no longer be a queen
Who says who gets to live or die
But Elizabeth nodded her head to those who cry
In memory of those slain
Do you think that I forget the pain
Just because I’m young and free
And no one has ever harmed me
In the way that is described
By the history books I pried
From my own fingers, harrowed to the core
And it’s not happening anymore
Here
But I fear
That a child bombed by the IDF
Has no chance to call for the ref
To call an end to the game
Coz the sides aren’t level and if it’s all the same
I’d rather not watch the slaughter
Of someone’s son or daughter
To satisfy regality
I’ve had enough of that to destroy me
Being Irish on Celtic soil
There were years I felt my blood boil
At the memory of what had been done
Now I am the one
Who can speak up to say
This is not okay
And if you make rubble out of homes
You poison your own stones
As they’re thrown into the pit
It’s not something I can sit with
And just say it’s the way things are
We are all warmed by the same star
And it heats every grain of sand
It is not limited to the realm of man
But to all of God’s creatures
To the expression of nature’s features
As it turns on us to express
That we cannot suppress
The sacred feminine within
Just to satisfy the man that would win
The war
You want a reason but what for?

My Studies

I wanted to be ready when the time came
So I studied hard and made my name
On the college scene
As someone who knows how to dream
And I did business studies then politics
International relations to call it quits
And I only did so so
But I’m not here to excel in what you want me to know
I want to know the frame of mind
That means we can leave 80% behind
When we talk about the global north
And we dream of sipping tea on our front porch
Without realising the claim to land
Is something the poor can’t understand
Coz farmers in India barely survive
And many don’t want to be alive
At the subsistence rate
Save the kids from the parents fate
Is what they state
When asked in a questionnaire
And I know it isn’t fair
But isn’t that just life, they say
But what if it doesn’t have to be that way
I see another path
One where God’s wrath
Is not the standard bearer
And no carer
Goes unpaid
Just so that girl “slayed”
In an instagram post
But you look like you’ve seen a ghost
But maybe it’s just the starving frame
Of a child in Africa - always the same
Isn’t it
And your quick wit
Won’t absolve you from
The privilege you’re holding wrong
So I must write to make it okay
And who will listen to what I have to say
If I say it on my own
But the colours that the prism has thrown
Has shown
Me that there is another might
Than the dark of night
And that a dawn to break
Is the place where the people wake
And see that their brother is their friend
And their neighbour must make amends
With who he’s come to be
And every child is born free
To a woman in our history
Or a non binary folk
Must we make the weak carry the yoke
And pull the weight up the hill
Does a country have the right to kill
Its own citizens or its enemies in fields
In martial arts the one who yields
Is the one who the wind blows with
And the flow is not something that can stick
To the pan when you’re flipping eggs
Don’t say that we’ve made our beds