(for my beautiful son, Patrick)

Imagine, it’s your son who’s on the run

After another shooting, by the police.

Imagine the fear, and then the relief,

When you find out he’s alive, though wounded.

Young lives matter – criminal justice rules the game –

It has always been the same: step out of line, serve your time.

Working class youth can see through these lies

Sack the police, sack the magistrates, sack the judges, set us free.

You need us tough-fragile young men in times of war

When raping, murdering barbarians are at your door.

Look at the stare of Federico García Lorca,

It travels through time, through space, the flamenco cante jondos,

Nothing divides us from these gypsy enemies of the Fascist state

We are privileged to share the deep culture of the Roma

Who travel to our unwelcoming land of mean calculation

Where the rich steal our time: the dead rich bend the rules:

Property law enshrined in statute, passes on wealth to the already wealthy.

Robs us of access to this ‘private money’, robs us of our dreamtime too.

But these parasites, the  MPs, bankers, judges, are old and afraid

Of our young black, brown and white working class youth

So afraid that they stuff their living graves

With bonds, title deeds, cash,

I wonder how long that shit will last?