How Is It Deemed A Protest? Poem by Mark Heathcote

How is it deemed a protest?
A child sat cross-legged on a roadside going-nowhere
clutching a book, surrounded by military police with batons
like a ground invasion to block out a divisible shrinking sun.
How is it deemed a protest?
How does this child threaten your regime?
Who child is threatened by you by yourself-
surely-it's-just a dream, and when you open your eyes-
there'll be feathered pillows, a mother's palm on your forehead.
But no, how is this possible you're waking in a cage
Facing the evil weight of a bullying natation somehow,
demonizing your every breath, don't they have courage?
Are-they-all bothers in one corrupt hood?
Doesn't anyone care for you, are-they-lice, fleas-
on a dog that cannot scratch the smallest of an itch?
Like a blind, dumb boxer in heavy gloves.