Wednesday’s Countdown Poem

If it made you cry (as it almost did me, reading it out loud), then I’m both sorry and not sorry x

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I’ve a very low opinion of people at the moment

Myself included, I am not exempt

For whilst person by person we seem just fine

As a species we’ve earnt nothing but contempt.

I know I’m not alone in thinking this much

And there’s folk who’ve phrased it with more eloquence

But seeing what we’re doing to this planet and each other

I cannot see humanity’s defence.

We’re dropping bombs on people in the desert

And when they run we tell them don’t come here

We’re electing cheats and frauds and liars and robbers

We stand and watch as hospitals just simply disappear.

But worst of all we’ve turned on one another

Whilst a tiny gang of people at the top

(Tell us) those folk at the bottom are the problem

They’ll bleed you dry, they’ll bleed you til you drop.

Racism and petty xenophobia

And different sects who wish each other dead

And all of it the fault not of the people at the top

But at the bottom, like the Daily Mail said.

Every day it seems there’s something else now

Either Trump or Ice Shelves melting to the seas

Or fascists taking power or Teachers giving up

Or the famously great Britain saying no to refugees.

And I’m left feeling like there’s nothing we can do now

Like we’re clinging to the tail-end of the rope.

I’m left feeling that love isn’t gonna win this in the end

I’m left feeling that there’s very little hope.

 

But then comes Christmas.

 

When the days are at their shortest, When darkness steals the hours

When winter frost holds hostage hill and glen

When everything is wet and cold, The sun robbed of its powers

What do we, humanity, do then?

We band ourselves together, We call our loved ones home

We buy each other presents and sing songs

We hold at bay the way the chill finagles for our bones

We create a place where everyone belongs.

In every street, in every town we howl at the abyss

We set the fires hot and watch them burn

We do the very opposite (of) what fear would have us do

We offer up our love and we receive love in return.

(And in) parks and out on pavements people smile at one another

And we put aside the old imagined dangers

And instead we see our kinship, how we’re really all the same

There’s no them and us, just us, though some are strangers.

Now I know I speak in broad strokes and not everyone agrees

Not every person sees the world this way.

But I do and I think old Roy Wood of Wizzard said it best

‘Oh, I wish it could be Christmas every day.”