Slogans

No poetry has made it onto the blog yet, so I thought I'd be brave and start the ball rolling. This one was written for the Edinburgh Uni Feminists and Literature Society joint poetry night, which had the theme of "voices". It's written to be spoken, but hopefully it works ok on the page too.

Ya basta!

Enough.

My voice was not strong enough when we marched

Me in my pushchair, ring a ring a roses round the roundabout to tell them

That nurseries should not be the first thing to go when times get hard

You say cut back we say fightback!

Maggie Maggie Maggie, OUT OUT OUT!

And we won.

I remember there were whistles to make us louder

and how my mother said, not yet

and how when the time came she was proud, proud of me

of my voice

We're here, we're queer, we will not live in fear!

and every time I raise it in slogans and songs

she's singing with the Greenham women

reclaiming the night through the decades

A strong arm makes a gude cause

Not the church and not the state, women must decide their fate!

I bought a whistle on the first big demo I went on alone

As bombs fell on Baghdad

It had a rainbow ribbon and a clear, rippling sound

Hey hey LBJ

Bush Blair CIA

Bush Blair Uncle Sam Iraq will be your Vietnam!

My voice is not just mine.

I am a point on a shining web

A convergence of people

Then and now and here and there

Oh you can't scare me I'm sticking to the union

Tin cans on string

The complexity of servers, wires, modems, screens

The nerves in a brain, too complicated to really understand

Everything that anyone has ever said to me.

Everything I have ever wanted to say.

Everything that has been said in unison.

Everything that was tiny in the silence.

The slogans that we shouted

Together, because that way

We're stronger

The times when my father used the right word

even though I wouldn't understand

And explained it so I would.

The times when words wouldn't come and a song

Said it instead. How did they know

What I couldn't say?

The times when words fall like stones from my mouth

And my friends know what they mean

And how to pick them up.

The poems that hatch like dragonflies from my lips

Because nothing else will say it

And because it has to be said.

I am still looking for the whistle,

the one which will make me heard -

A way to hold the threads,

los pueblos, unidos, jamas seran vencidos!

a way to channel this breath of mine

A rainbow ribbon to tie round my neck,

a charm and a talisman, from which to hang my dreams.