In the stocks today, shackles round your ankles,
Hear ye! Hear ye! Do listen to this story.
A flicker of eyes, a jerk of the neck.
They fear. Nothing pretty to look at there.
A spider web of scars that do not fade,
Red and dusted with flies that once had names.
They collect dust too, same old, same old,
That's what your stories are now.
Black and white, no depth between your lines,
This is how it is, that is what they see.
Sometimes they feel a sharp prod,
A wild stir of fleeting emotion,
A tear in the eye, a voice in their throat,
Then fading, fading, rapidly gone.
Your shoes are difficult to fill,
They give you blisters that do not heal.
They make wrong turns and you must follow
Their long, weary roads through broken communities.
Darkness, it creeps beneath your skin, empathetic, ugly.
Sympathy, you roll it forward like a wave,
Then draw it back out again when the weather comes on.
Sunny today, sunny tomorrow,
Your mouth is parched from the drought.
You have to shout if you want them to hear your story,
But all that comes out is a scratchy whisper.
They lean forward for a moment to catch it
Then whip back again into an affair of
Romance, dinner and putting the kids to bed.
You trace the wounds, the leftovers of devastation.
A stab wound here, visible ribs, a crushed ankle.
Your money was taken, your thoughts corrupted.
Your fingers are frozen, but your head is simmering.
Sometimes, just sometimes, something alightens your soul.
A brief candle that glows with a lonely flame
And then goes out with silent snap.
Times move forwards, driving through a greyscale,
Closer and closer to the dark.
And you follow along, collecting scars and stories
For a digitalised archive no one wants to see.
No one can meet your eye for it's easier to turn their heads,
Because you are their news
And that news is simply ugly.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem