riots have broken out in the UK again
so many angry, angry men
and wives at home cooking their meat and potato dinners
or mothers patting them on the back, asking them questions
about their impending GCSEs
This time they are racists every one of them
chasing a ghost some guy made up on the internet
fighting an evil that doesn’t exist
and killing real people in real time
Again the pain of the reality
that the quiet of peace does not drown out the noise of hate
Again an economic problem becomes the hatchet in an innocent man’s head
And there will be a certain number of arrests
but the police are not the ones to resolve this kind of unrest
An incoming government collecting the last one’s problems
and making concessions to centrality so they soon sound just like them
And all my smart, loving, beautiful friends sleeping a little more uneasy in their beds
And anything, everything that I can do feels too small
To grow up white and british and aware
Is to learn on your 16th birthday
that your dad is a rapist
and your mother stole every toy she ever gave you from all your friends at primary school
that all the smiles you had playing as a child were stolen
that your genes and all that evil are hard to separate –
they are all in a tangle
Were your happy memories real? Is it okay to think of them now?
Who do you owe what for the mistakes of the people that raised you?
And what is the toxic on your tongue that they taught you to speak too?
Evil riots on the street again
I can try and change the now
but I can’t turn back the time
to reverse what my mum and dad did.