This 4th July, America continues to be roiled by the aftershocks of the murder of George Floyd and the transformative impact of Black Lives Matter. Here, through the medium of poetry, PGS pupils from Years 9, 10 and 12, reflect on the movement and its significance.
 |
| (image by Jimmy Cathie-Morgan) |
We live on a dying planet
Locking ourselves away
In fear of tiny invaders
Yet we can still divide ourselves
On nothing more than dark skin and blue clothes
We tell ourselves “it’s fine”
But no one knows the truth
Some people fight the government
And others live in complacency
Yet we still gain nothing
We look to the future
Without solving the problems of today
We still hideaway inside
To avoid the dying planet outside
Jonathan Chimbwandira
I see fire, furious cobalt flames
Searing canopies, scorching families
Lives aflame, money retired
A planet like an enkindled match
I see death, surging graphs and figures
Benighted heads oblivious, devoted specialists
furious
Shallow acts, stretching transmission
A country painted sterile
I see masses, all nauseous with repeated
suffering
Hundreds of forgotten victims, at fault of a
failing system,
Protesters' silence, leaders lying
A human with a coloured shield
Sofia Findlay-Pacheco
Our Year
Look at how the fires gut the bush,
igniting the blazes of conflict and blame, suffering and
shame.
But the Man, who can’t bear to see the global debate centred
Elsewhere, throws his toys out of the pram and sends a spy
Flying over a country that isn’t his - people start whispering
“world war three”. The superpower gets
ripped apart but it’s all for nothing - he still scrapes
through,
His minions bending to his will and controlling the decision,
our
Sacred ‘saviour’ of a system. The silent killer wriggles and
Slithers into our nations, but his
Beautiful Timeline still stands strong,
Despite the big apple gasping for air and slowly sinking
under.
We lock ourselves down, suffocating under the intensity of
Our Mentalities. With our families, loved but lost.
Then the world finds out how long a human can last under the
Crushing force of a knee - eight minutes to change the
world.
He can’t breathe. We can’t breathe.
Abigail Cooper
All around the world we stand
In streets
Peacefully waiting for the inevitable
For the gas to come floating aggressively towards
Us, for the rubber bullets to hit our skin
The same skin that differentiates us
The same skin that caused all of this
The same skin that threatens black lives every day
The chants are deafening,
As deafening as the gunshots that killed
Seven hundred and fifty five innocent black people
In the past four years alone
Alone they were, but now
Now we stand together to fight
For justice
For equality
Still we wait
For the police to come around the corner
To lift their guns and aim
Despite there being no threat
We kneel down but they take no notice
Bullets rain down, the injustice scattering everywhere
Screams and shouts echo off the policemens’ shields
The same shields used to knock people down
The same shields that create the wall between justice and the present
day
Still we fight
For the inequality in the justice system
All over our world
The same world that endangers black lives day in
Day out
Another day another chance
To fight for justice in politics, in the police force, in the people
Francesca Ashton
Help Me, I Can’t Breathe
46 years and his life was snatched
For using a counterfeit bill,
Minneapolis police disregarded his humanity
So his daughter screams for daddy still
We Protested in response
To stop the racist violence against black lives
Exclaiming “black lives matter”
In hope that the police will help them survive
We chanted through the streets
As a nation we united
To see what the world has done for his case
George Floyd would be delighted
We did it for him and the others that suffered
And there’s so much we managed to achieve
So stop the police from killing when we say;
“Help me I can’t breathe”
Elsa Hares
Monthly Misfortunes
Tensions risen high for nations,
The heart of the map in fury,
All out of failed relations,
After a decision with no jury,
The demolition of democracy,
As a nation suppresses,
To shatter the hypocrisy,
Of the nation that never addresses,
Fire and man locked in war,
In a fight to stop the spread,
Right at civilisations door,
In a fight to end the bloodshed,
Followed by the curtain of lies,
A virus ignored by billions,
Spread to the world by sunrise,
Infecting in the millions,
Yet a man lay still in a street,
People demanded for a solution,
Fearlessly marching to meet,
The men stopping this revolution,
This is only the beginning,
Of a long story to tell,
The story of 2020,
When Earth went to hell.
Felix Roth
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments with names are more likely to be published.