Kill all Palestinians, a Munich middle school had displayed,
while my husband’s colleague said, they all come out the same,
when another mentioned, rather meekly, they’re still human,
the consensus was that in war our souls are expendable in right’s name.
My husband, a man of honeyed green eyes,
raised to love a volk to the point of being blind,
who knows better what role-modelled indifference preserved in liquid contempt,
does to a people, a country, in need of a new mind.
Imagine his worn-out despair,
where can he hide, where can he run,
to find escape from the lie that equal humanity bears no right,
the callousness that hides self-interest, promising a brighter socio-economic sun.
We say we are past days old,
but in 2009, El-Sherbini was four months pregnant,
her neighbour called her names for covering her hair,
stabbing her eighteen times in a Dresden courtroom,
forcing her three-year-old to witness her blank stare.
And you have to wonder if you wear a wide brim hat, will you offend too?
If you shave your head,
or get tattoos.
Should you prefer summer skirts or minis,
full costumes over bikinis,
at what point is a woman’s choice anywhere free of social whinnying?
On a video, Union Jacks discuss the great replacement threat,
amongst millions of likes, a Svensk comments under his real name,
saying that most of what he sees in the city in which he stays,
are blacks, Muslims and fat chicks, his Armageddon is his frightening shame.
He appears uninterested in whether those “Muslims” were born Swedes,
or whether the “blacks” and “fat chicks” are Swedish too.
Somehow, by their physicality alone they are presumed less Swedish,
I’m sure he is colour-blind, racism and sexism, a long dead milieu.
On a random social media post,
a local news site celebrates a woman getting a job,
after twenty years of trying, she finally found career income.
A man says she should have removed her helmet, spoken better Swedish instead of being a blob.
Hijab, you mean? A woman points out, which he ignores,
Does he realise he supports economic exclusion on the basis of religion and language?
Proposing unfair discrimination that deprives people of economic thriving,
And is he a company team leader, an HR exec, filtering out “those CVs” like excess baggage?
A TV series in 2024 received a rating,
from an ordinary “expert” on gangs,
calling children sucked into criminality: monkeys, monkeys and more monkeys.
I dare ask if he is a doctor, a social worker or a court judge,
someone who in reality hurts regularly the dehumanised young.
Are these questions impolite,
or poking at used-to complicity hidden,
now feeling discomfort with ideas that no one leaves at home,
showing how many of us are capable of human sins forbidden.
Where is this going, you must be wondering,
well, I wonder too.
What I hear and see, is the call for permission,
the rulers consent,
to find Capra hircus to sacrifice and maim, if only a few.
Find me a Capra hircus who looks almost human,
I enjoy their torture the most,
I’ll take them young or old, girl or boy,
I’ll hack them from head to toe with policies, inaction or overwhelming force.
Find me a Capra hircus who speaks in their desert, savannah working tongues,
the ones that I can mock, dismiss, undermine and rage against,
when they dare believe we are equal or could be one.
Find me a Capra hircus, so I may say they deserve to die,
in the womb, in the crib, by police or army hands, sleeping in tents,
I want to imagine their loss, dream of their visceral cries.
Find me a Capra hircus, so I don’t have to inspect,
the decades-long choices of governmental, intergovernmental, and multi-business effects.
I don’t want to discuss geopolitical rug-pulling, economic exclusion, whether intended or not,
lonely children, traumatised parents, pressures and stress,
the working of class weaved into everyday choices, our melting pot.
Find me a Capra hircus that I can tear into shreds,
at least one who walks alone to school, skinny in round spectacles,
maybe aged eleven or sixteen, the kind not abundantly fed.
Find me a Capra hircus alone on a municipal bus,
scrolling through social media, I want to talk dirt behind her back,
or, even better, pull off her scarf with strands of her hair,
as I walk past, eating my mid-lunch snack.
Find me a Capra hircus that asks the question, why?
who needs a good yank or shove under police gaze,
who’ll be presumed a terror fan,
those are the lesser-thans I love to leave in a daze.
Find me a Capra hircus who will say stupid stuff,
like human rights matters, or what about human life?
Would you do the same to people who looked like you?
Silly billies, that’s not how this works, it’s not our fault you were born to the wrong class or flying kite.
Of this, I have seen too much,
I watch comedy shows and listen to music,
to escape in brief moments the inescapable rush.
I am shocked over these last months.
Lost amongst indifference, lost over and over again.
How many unpublished cases of sheer cruelty have gone unseen,
while bottom drawers allow divide and conquer to be played.
Higher-ups sitting on plush seats,
talking about cultural marxism,
a remix of nationalist us versus them, old sieg heil’s bolshevic narrative,
which has no reference to actual German Marx, theirs is a class divide hierarchism.
Whilst the braying vik slaughtered almost a hundred children of his country,
gets to be an exception, a one-off extremist,
a pregnant woman, the unemployed or a child, male and lost,
is undoubtedly a universal threat just by breathing.
So in 2022,
when combatting nazism, neonazism came to a vote,
should we be surprised that fifty-two countries voted against,
stopping exclusion, undermining, abuse, any ethnic cleansing of note.
For me, this is shocking,
only insofar that I am seeing this everywhere,
I watched video after video of Hindus in India,
abusing neighbours for digesting Islam, not rare.
It is one thing to debate the political use of religion,
weaved into government, business,
institution’s processes and policies.
All the religions have that problem,
Christians used the bible to justify South Africa’s apartheid.
And of course, the papal decrees of the church, Doctrines of Discovery,
suggested barbarous nations should be overthrown,
brought to the faith instead of left without worry.
Even now, women are arguing against religion,
mixing-in with politics, economic practices and rules,
some see a world attempting to lock them,
barefoot and pregnant in their homes.
Their bodies aren’t theirs, whether raped, dying or young and afraid,
They’re having to justify why they’re choosing sex without marriage,
a scary road covered in shame, ridicule or rage.
Others are wondering why religious criticism,
or not believing is a threat,
or how gender determines who gets to be schooled,
drive a car or even protest.
Our human family in Iran are fighting for their right to choose.
A hashtag showing women being assaulted on video,
for daring to suggest as a prank they will no longer cover their hair,
their own husbands, brothers, fathers abusing them for made-up choices…their despair.
Separating religion from power is one thing, discussing what human beings deserve is fair,
but that’s not what is happening, is it?
There’s contempt-soaked indifference being shared and spread,
and we capitulate to it while declaring to be better.
I can’t be the only one,
noticing the setting of a window-dressing sun,
the base ideology, a shadow fog rising from mental graveyards,
declaring to the world,
that we need to eradicate “them” in order to maintain our soul-withering fun.
The same powers that say, “tough shit”,
who drove Evangelical plans to seize land,
hold no moratorium after Ayesha Younis Salam,
was shot dead in bed beside her siblings, three-years-old,
marked twelve on the cheek, another kill trophy in Capra Hircus sands.
Who are mine, you ask?
Everyone, buddy, ev-ery-one.
The Israelis frightened till death on videos we were forced to watch,
the too few anti-occupation critics now dead.
The Palestinian villagers slaughtered, tortured,
raped and sickeningly abused pre- and post 1948.
The Iranian and Afghani women challenging unfair rules.
Illan Pappé called self-hating, raising the sword of Jewish honour,
I will not stop, he says, I know who I am,
Hundreds more, Jewish kin,
sons of Moses, voices pouring down, let my people go, they rain.
My people? The children forced to eat animal feed, Hind Rajab begging for her life.
The children disabled, once walking,
skipping out of school,
shot in the legs by hidden soldiers,
in an occupied home with bullshit rules.
Ashira Darwish showing us where,
olive trees weep,
reminding us that chains on one,
are chains on all, successive powers knew and chose to sleep.
The Nordic doctor crying on screen,
scolding higher-ups for their complicity,
a helpless man surrounded by patients that lie screaming,
children being amputated without anaesthesia,
a natural war cost we are led to believe,
independent investigators denied entry,
western journalists losing their jobs but told they are free,
while ongoing profits stream in for war makers,
pre-election speeches of misdirection,
cannot hide higher-ups connecting geopolitical dots,
an old formula of crushing resistance, Obama Trump von der Leyen speeches smell of rot.
My people are the children forced from their mothers’ embrace and piled onto trucks, named vermin, human form animals,
sent from concentration camps to their cold deaths, while cannibalistic powers now repeat those very same sentiments.
The mobilisation of hurt and trauma into raging Arab voices and fists,
who say to Arab leaders and monarchs,
you too are complicit with our land loss and death for years.
The same disenfranchised who say we were always owed a presiding say:
Who are you to come to our home,
and tell us to be quiet, lie down, just die or go away.
The ordinary everyone are my people,
every human life.
And that’s what I don’t understand,
How could great powers in the 1900s,
architect or approve mass displacement, dehumanisation and seizing of land?
How could they continually justify cruelty for self-interest and in modern times?
This did not happen in 1562,
our families were alive when the media ignored the full breath of what they knew.
And that is why so many of us did not know what our governments allowed,
a soul crushing riddle spread across crowds.
It is the numb, dead souls that tell us full-truth, context and human life does not matter.
Children, malnourished to death, leaves me unrested while resting.
My mind wanders in quiet moments,
I know one thing to be true,
we are none Capra hircus, sacrificial meat,
we are each other’s mirror image,
and I don’t think those with influence will ever see this common thread,
humanity honouring humanity is our long-forgotten hope,
while under tons of rubble mothers and their babies lie rotting and dead.