It is becoming harder to find people who refuse to be cowed by fear, and made to hate.

Our borders are a circus sideshow; we sit in increasingly uncomfortable pews and watch the sad, desperate clowns beg for some of our popcorn, and the chance to sit down and rest, for just a little while. We don’t want the popcorn; we want hotdogs and french fries but it all costs too much these days, and that’s their fault too.

Build more fences, send more dogs.

Children scream as their ears bleed but they aren’t ours, they aren’t anywhere near ours. They aren’t anything to do with us and it isn’t our fault or our problem. A young boy washes in the sea closer to home. The salt stings and his body starves and he’s the ultimate unwanted. He wants to return to a home that will hurt him even more, and to a family returned to the earth. Blame the French. Blame the Greeks. Blame the Muslims and the Syrians, the swarming, stinking hordes.

So come to the circus, and bring your kids, 3000 crying clowns, all walking the tightrope without a net. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. The horses have bolted and the dancing girls have all been sliced in two. The ringmaster never drops his whip. He sits in the centre and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

I stand for the forgotten, the ones nations have forsaken,
Left to die on the open seas, or in the hidden camps,
Or in the care of those my country has paid to keep them quiet.
You will not keep us silent,
We will shout and scream until the voices of those across the ocean are heard
Until they are lead onto the podium and given the right to speak again, the right from long ago.

I will stand for my brothers and sisters, aunties, uncles, my family; spread across the earth who seek the shelter of my homeland, and I will welcome them with open arms.
And you will not stop me.