"You can’t go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending" — CS Lewis.

We know that Brexit is a changeling, a doppelganger with its soul in its mouth,
it stamps blue wax on sealed promises that all will be avowed to us
the poor bring pots to piss in and the pots turn to mead,
and the mead shall make us drunk in the polling booth.

We know that we are sacred scraps of our forefathers weighed down with expectation,
there is a single father from Trinidad and they wash Britain from his name,
the burgundy of his passport a final visa to go home without identity,
the whiteness of his babbies eyes not white enough for May’s England.

We know that Jo Cox was a lioness of England felled by a barbarian’s thorn,
We know that the swords of justice are pens held in the hands of flawed poets,
are paintbrushes in the hands of weeping schoolchildren eating from bins,
are parents begging to use the plugs at schools to charge Androids.

I know that I love all of my Brexit-men, and country-men, and women and
Human beings are a race that are standing still blocked by a wall and fake-tan presidents.

Poetry on the Picket Line is a squad of like-minded poets putting themselves about to read their work on picket lines, in the spirit of solidarity. Invitations to rallies etc. welcome, contact them on Facebook.

The new Poetry on the Picketline anthology is available at culturematters.org.uk.