A foreign fire.
Boiling the skin on.
Aching arms.
Heaving, hollow.
Stones dissolve.
The life jacket the only identity.
The anonymity of a despairing face.
Water-logged clothes on invisible bodies.
Babies abandoned by the big blue woman.
The commuting pages in the brains of commuting bodies.
Bleaching the facts.
White. Washing it all away.

Out stretching
Out reaching
The callused, bleeding hands
Of tightly gripping on.

The permantly furrowed brow,
Weathering a face which has seen too much.
The innocent eyes try,
But are clouded over.

His everyday grows like a plane
flying over
Dunkirk dawn
Guns drawn.

His green home
Of west is best
And his voice would flow
With a carefree blow

which has blown
to fragments.

His streets turned red
When in November they would tred
To remember
Those who bled
Now they are only spotted

Every year dearer
Washing away.

In the distance,
a speck of green and blue

and grey pulls me closer
the curious fires on me and it
spread.

I land on the speck
Of green and blue

and grey
and the people
greet me
with a stretched hole on top of their bodies.
As if it is being pulled
by some other thing

I ask them about the speck
of green and blue

and grey
they say
you can do as you may
lay on the bay
all day
and watch the stars play.

These people of beige and brown

and grey
listen to my story of my speck
and they reject
Their falsehoods of fantasy lives
glare In front of them.

Like the lights from my ship.

I watch the people of beige and brown and grey
On their speck of green and blue and grey
And wonder in sympathy.

Look.
Look again.
Don't avert your eyes.
Don't keep scrolling.

A boy alone on a beach.
A product of the dry cheeks of Westminster.

Let the image burn.
Burn until you can't escape it.
Burn until it consumes you.
Until it's all you can picture,
until you finally regain a pulse.
Let the sirens inside you begin as you look,
Let the fire of sadness and anger tear through your veins as you look,
Feel your heart pour out into the image as you look,
Picture his mother, childless as you look,
Picture this thousands and thousands times more as you look,
And keep looking...

N.Hedges

Each piece wedged in deep,
deep in the soul.
Proposals and births,
deaths and break-ups.

Each explosion causes shrapnel.
Little shards of experiences.
Bad and good,
all in us, making us.

N. Hedges

You can be on your own,
But no-one is alone
Truly.

Bang.

let them do the job
as they do we need to simply look the other way

The Islamophobia is suffocating
the saturation is enough.

There are children there
but we don't see that.

Children without fathers.
Children without mothers.

The Christian fanatics
are not so different.

You have your flag,
You have your gun.
So do they,
but they're the evil one?

Take a mirror and as you do,
you will see, they look like you.

Your religion is no better,
no holier or worthy,
we are all human
all equal.

But some are more equal than others.
Aren't they?

N. Hedges