Streets bloom with colours
like orchids of dissent,
where freedom’s bleeding tongue splits
into many ways speaking,
with each voice a nation unto itself,
fracturing the old worn vase of consensus
into shards that cut and illuminate.

We guard the guards who guard the right to
burn the guardhouse down:
this ouroboros of civility eating
its delicate democratic tail,
while disparate voices shout
through police lines,
refracting light into a prismatic dispersal of voices
no one nation can contain.

This tension-wire democracy
is drawn-out hot and taut
between the need to breathe
and the need to scream,
in pounding lungs from the same living body.

 

 

13/9/2025