Hate

Hate.

Torch light flickers over university grass,
Imposing bronzes hollow as their message,
Rewriting history in celebration of ignorance,
Demonising orange pickers while glorifying slavers.

Blood and soil chants,
Fake Fatherland heroes,
Fat Nazis wear cheap combats,
Cowards beneath swastikas,
Shaming Old Glory with runes of death,
Grasping at never happened shadows,
Sculpting futures that should not be.

From Omaha beach to Virginia,
People died to resist the last tidal wave,
These thugs always so quick with a list,
Automatic rifle army surplus lynch mobs,
Longing to burn flesh instead of crosses.

Failed weekend warriors,
Praying to Jesus while spitting on Jesús,
Beer bellied Teutons emboldened by arch degenerates,Wizards, grand dragons and clowns, Manipulation of the poor by the most deviant rich.

In a bargain store Nuremberg rally,
Desperate for their heel to connect,
To stand for a moment superior,
One instant in a miserable wasted life,
Of fevered white supremacy dreams.

Fascism emboldened, suited and booted,
Raising a spectre on ordinary streets,
Militias in chest rigs armed to the teeth,
Decrying progress to claw back pasts,
When segregation was instituted,
And apartheid openly preached.

Ruairí de Barra

Kindly published in Live Encounters Magazine in their Special 10th Anniversary Edition, Volume II, December 2019. You can read the four poems in this special volume on the Live Encounters website or download a free .pdf copy just by clicking here.

Live Encounters is a wonderful publication and all of its issues, as well as special editions, may be found on its website at https://liveencounters.net/

I would like to thank Mark Ulyseas for seeing fit to include my work again in the same pages of some truly talented people.