Blessings (2022)
The city farts, wakes everyone up from the smell, then it’s time for work. All live in bondage to some degree but only bosses and landlords really profit. Self-help schemes and agents of faith thrive in the sale of forgiveness which is gold dust dolloped with suspicion. Why pore over papers, do the prickly therapy, rake out dough, when someone can just take a punch with grace? And so it was to everyone’s surprise that the ones who have to work thrice as hard, who wore veils, were born across seas, with melanin and sequined jockstraps began to mutter something on the commute. It grew to a buzz and filled train cabins and buses like locust.
“Bless you who guzzle our rent, may your greed be quenched. May the ones who destroy our forests feel content with what’s in the fridge. Bless you who hate your femininity, the accent you’ve tried to lose, may you gain love for yourself. Let your anger out, we’ll hold you.” The movement clawed a foothold in love and desperation. In the following years, the chanting stayed the same volume but changed tenor. It was as though half chanted doubly as loud, and the other half went silent, but inequality never happens in neat halves and anyone who talks like that is invested in not looking things in the eye. Wordlessness gripped those who got their cake and those in the mire of oppression. Did things get better? Fuck knows, people don’t speak to each other on the tube.
Curses (2022)
Before the revolution, we had too much to be livid about. By the time it ended, we were master cussers. Now there’s nothing to curse and we spend our time following the seasons and feasting together like a Jasimuddin pastoral. Rather than let our tongues go limp, we cultivate it as an artform and roar insults as though they were laughter. We profaned as pillow talk and on birthdays. The children ad lib clapping games to nobody in particular: Empty pockets and stinky bum// a headful of what fills a drum // teeth went missing and shame got found // end your sight and end your sound
Not like we’ve forgotten the words and history of the great thinkers - where their words fall short or are too dense we find other ways. The fear that sires censorship is old fashioned. The libraries are well funded and we learn in nuance, jokes and action. When the kids have questions, we teach what we can and admit what we can’t. Sometimes, when our words aren’t enough, we show them the hilts and butts on our ploughshares and they understand.
Gibberish (2022)
She strides in 3 minutes late with her bestie. They award her for services to the people during the austerity their own advisers engineered. To make it extra shiny, some soldiers line up in camp flowers and leather before the throne. She felt yucky about it, forced herself to go with a scowl-turned-pout-turned-steel-eye. The approval of a state is odd and moot, especially a state deft at legal loopholes for hunger and bloodshed in the name of moolah. Every electable party is nationalist as though the wellbeing of people and land ends with borders and friskers. Single yew trees have outlived the country yet it teaches school kids to call it by one eternal name. Tip of the iceberg, yes.
She does her best. First she thanks the cleaners and cooks for their trouble, second, blanks the monarch, and third turns her back for the snack table. There, her friend has its fill of the canapes and patisserie. With both hands she swipes the meringue pie made with taxpayer money and makes a U-turn to the door. Trotting back through the gates and down the road, she tears the pastry into pieces and passes them to a parade of kids at the gates like pigeons. Eyes closed, she turns her head to the right to bless the new generation with the power to make these the last gates they stand behind. Turning her head to the left she wishes styes, upturned plugs, split bin liners and the like on the agents of inequality.