injustice poems

Rock Dreaming | Neil Creighton

I walk past water gums,
roots twisting and flowing over rock,
past the creek’s eddy and swirl,
past deep grooves in rock
made long ago by sharpening spears.
Is that the laughter of naked children?
No. They are long gone,
now only imagination’s shadows
flitting through scrub.

I scramble up a long hill
to stand on a huge expanse of rock.
The world seems quiet and still.
All around in the stone are carvings-
kangaroos, emus, women, men, shields, spears,
a great spirit creature.
I imagine clans of Dharug people meeting here
to dance, laugh, cry, draw, worship, wonder,
and most of all, to belong.
Do I sense them?
That is a lie.
Their culture, life, laughter and song
have shrunk into the past.
They seem long gone.

I lie on the rock and close my eyes.
Underneath my back
are curving patterns in rock.
I see cloud, rain, sun’s rising, sun’s falling, moon, stars,
the diamond quilt of night.
I see people greet, paint their bodies, tell stories, dance, sing,
belong, feel purpose, feel love, draw and carve.
I am filled with loss for the changes of time,
for the tangle of history,
for the injustice of the present,
for prejudice, dislocation, theft and murder,
and I know that where they,
in such deep belonging, did roam,
my ancestors, England’s rejects,
came from the other side of the world
to claim it as their own.

The sun is low.
I begin the long walk back.
As I walk I am moved by the knowledge
that Dharug people are still living,
scattered through the land of their ancestors
and although the past cannot be changed,
its loss and sorrow should be sung.
I am taken too by the crazy dream
of a single people
meeting under these southern stars,
upon the great patterned rock of this land
to draw, dance, embrace and sing together

as I descend into a gully
and the sun disappears
and the single evening star
hangs low in the darkening sky.

More at http://windofflowers.blogspot.com.au.

4th Lesson | Langley Shazor

When greatness fails
Is it apologetic?
Does it look back on those it scorned?
Seeking to raise them from the ashes?
Lend me your ear
Lend a helping hand
Does it have a shred of empathy?
Or does it march over skeletons
Crushing skulls and dreams
Beneath boots of arrogance
Destroying ideals
Destroying hope
What drumbeat is this?
The drums of battle cries
Sticks and stones
Spears, arrows, catapults
Pierce pure hearts
On bended knees we are knighted
To do whose will?
Without standing on the shores of humility
When the wall comes crumbling
And injustice wrapped full circle
Was there ever anything truly great?

Killing Poverty | Ananya S. Guha

Regardless of caring, not caring, the man carrying a burden on his
back, is what
I turn away from, to hide my
face or my shame or recognize the fact that ours
is a country, where self destroys, forgetting not itself, but others
who share burden of killing, mitigating that one bit.
Killing poverty.

Untitled | Rohit Sagolsem

Have you ever lived in a place where gunshots occur every day
Without hearing a bang? Where you don’t even have water?
I have and I have moved on from that place
In search of harmony and a virtuous land.
Have you ever seen your brothers or sons beaten half-dead?
I have, my family was scared and they sent me off.
I had learned the basics that my teachers taught but
I couldn’t find life lessons and I remained stopped like a clock.
Life presented a turning point and it is now where I stand,
Man, the supreme lord in the food chain,
But I can’t tolerate the injustice among men
The poor will remain hungry, the rich healthy,
You with many faces, come forth, don’t show me your back
For you are the coward with a clown face
You in the crowd, you make families suffer
Sons and daughters at home waiting for their mother to cook them supper, some wait for their grandmother to come home
Your stomach will be filled with fame and gesture
The children will need food in order to thrive
You will name it a socialized society
But the irony will be a ‘vandalized young heart’
Stepping on the empty stomach, you will call yourself the man.

The Beat Goes On | Judy Moskowitz

Poetry and politics
Don’t seem to rhyme
In revolutionary times,
Spitting words of anger
Slam reflection,
“I can’t get no satisfaction,”
Until you live inside a poem
Threading words with tears
That will never evaporate
An ink well of thought,
These visions that live
In the pages of our minds
Somehow find their way,
A chain link
To the written word,
The dress code for
The underclass
Marching to the same song
Unheard,
Nothing has changed
And the beat goes on.

Opinions Matter | Krushna Chandra Mishra

It is never that people can’t have
Opinions on issues that trouble them
In scores of ways when roads are full of potholes,
When for days even paying bills and charges there
Is no streetlight, no timely water supply or public transport,
When hospitals and schools go without doctors and teachers,
When police and justice systems underperform to the dismay of all,
Or when the expected and the promised things don’t take place for
Sheer casualness of undeserving people in positions of power and
authority.
It matters greatly that people have to speak their minds
When things don’t happen, as in all fairness of practices,
And people duty-bound to deliver dodge and diabolically dictate
Terms contrary to how they should behave in decent ways
When their arrogance and adamancy are to let loose hell
Where heaven could descend if lies and mischief were denied
A role in people’s lives to leave the world undulated with misery.

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