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Jan 2015
Such crude and foul filth fills the minds of us,
all of us, no pure, sweet angels exist.
Beneath the surface- all that we ever discuss-
and amidst the house shrouded in mist
Is where thoughts leak out like a cuts soaking pus,
Where wrong bends to right and wrongly persists,
Where woman are stripped and men are whipped,
Where colours are scratched off and blood runs from fists,
Where truth is only true until someone twists
it like a noose for a neck for their unassuming victim.

This is what we live in- A house with a thousand ceilings.
This is why some give in- Above them another man is kneeling.

And when their old ceiling becomes their floor,
they pour pennies down through the cracks
and laugh at those scrambling down below.  
They watch them feel the walls for a door,
making smug remarks at the class each lacks:
“ Not a single painting or books in a row.
How on earth can they expect their riches to grow”.
But its not about how you know it, you know.
It’s not about having any fine things to show.
It’s natural persistence- the breeze and the rivers flow.

To climb the construction in which you have been confined,
is to fall for a foolish notion- a Fugazi another man designed.

I was born in it’s basement, among crowds
and foul, rotten breath. Flesh was scratched
from our backs as we were standing bowed,
they left some shoulders with their heads detached.
But I never fought to the top or leaped,
Never fought back in any fight I was matched.
I crawled, sickly on the splitting wood floor,
in search of what lay behind an old closed door.  
It took a lifetime time for me to find,  
but it lay there wide open with sky falling behind.

Our Mothers beauty lay within our Fathers patient arms,
and I ran to greet them while the house sounded it’s alarms.

His hands did not shake, her sea’s didn't boil.
But that old building now lays deep beneath their soil.
C J Baxter
Written by
C J Baxter  The ether
(The ether)   
379
   Cecelia Francis
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