The Uprising

At the poets reading people sit,
read the paper before she begins.

They read about portraits;
the unflattering portrait of
a pregnant princess and the
true portrait of a dead sir
with a catalogue of crimes.

There is a revolt against both.

These portraits are unearthed
in the museums downstairs
lecture hall. Upstairs the works
of Irish artists sleep where we
would have sat if the reading
had not been oversubscribed.

There is an uprising in poetry today.

We wait to hear the poet’s
observations of events, flukes
weaved through stories lit, licked
and spoken. Truths or half-truths;
we have no way of knowing.

The poet draws us, reaches us
somewhere. She speaks of birth, death,
things that come between the two.
I scan the sea of bobbing brunettes
and peppered brunettes; wonder
about the absence of bookish blondes.

When the poet reads we celebrate
her cleverness, and our own,
for being the types to travel to
lecture halls on Saturday afternoons
off and that we are inside when

riots are lighting ‘round Belfast city.

© Kelly Creighton

Belfast: It's not just about the flag

Kelly Creighton has work in Wordlegs, The Ranfurly Review, A New Ulster, Electric Windmill Press and numerous other publications. Kelly has an historical fiction novel.

A Ballad of Blood

Riot against riot,
Retribution for eternal assassination in an alien land.
A flock of ousted canopies seeking a grain of sand,
An inch of belonging to lay down their listless bodies.
The body which sowed a sapling in the sleep,
The seed will bear forth flowers,
A stooping rhododendron of peace.
Chunks of red clay lie littered around the caravans of global geography,
Dead graves of faith, trust and hope.
When the nation was split by sweat and blood,
And soaked by shared rivers flowing amidst anguished territories.
Retreating folks carry an oblivious history, shattered by jolts of fanaticism,
A swooning stream of blue bile screams through mellow memories and shallow foliage.

©  Sutanuka Banerjee

Ethnic riots sweep Assam, at least 30 killed
Protest against Assam riots turns violent in Mumbai

Sutanuka is a researcher in the University of Malaga, Spain as an Erasmus Mundus student. She tries to pick up pebbles from the path of life and treasure them as the new chapters of experience.

A Lullaby for Our Troubled Times

Hush a bye baby,
in the cradle of democracy:
when the wind blows
the cradle will quake.
Hush a bye, hush a bye;
though Daddy croons a lullaby;
when the bough bends,
it’ll shake us awake.

Hush a bye baby,
we’re living with plutocracy:
capital is cool, and all
the rich are on the make.
Hush a bye, hush a bye:
we close our eyes and let it lie.
When the bough falls,
will we see our mistake?

©  Abigail Wyatt

Greece Passes Austerity Bill As Riots Spread
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Abigail publishes poetry and short fiction.  She lives in Redruth, Cornwall and performs her work at the Melting Pot, Krowji, The Unplugged Chameleon, St Ives, and The Be Spoken Word in Penzance.

Spoiled Sport

Riots Rage at the Kick of Pig Skin

the space between
middle eastern goal posts
is combustible
flames rise higher then
religions reach
Allah ashamed
turns off the television
as the pitch is torn to shreds
and the supporters revel in chaos
the final tally of this competition
regardless of the score
left injured or dead
will always be
a draw.

© Joshua Baumgarten

Egyptian health ministry: 74 dead, hundreds injured in soccer riots
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joshua Baumgarten is an ex-pat New Yorker living in Holland. He organises the Irrational Library evenings - nights of poetry, rock n roll and casual chaos, and performs as a Standup Spoken Word artist.



Egypt

freedom reigned in the Arab Spring,
as the government fell,
no news from Egypt,
the revolution quietly advances,
until riots and deaths at a soccer match,
the europeanizing of Egypt  almost complete.

© Douglas Polk

Egypt mourns soccer riot victims; thousands march in Cairo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas is a poet from Nebraska. He has published three books of poetry; In My Defense, The Defense Rests, and On Appeal.

Go Compare

Q. When is a joke not a joke?
A. When it's about smashing windows
in front of the press
and aimed at rioters
on a private Facebook group
and gets you four years.

Q. When is a joke a joke?
A. When it's about shooting parents
in front their children
and aimed at millions
on prime time national TV
and gets you a Prime Ministerial apology.

When does UK law show its true colors to become a sick joke?
When it only accepts the apology of the rich and powerful bloke.

© @ThePoetGeo

Facebook riot calls earn men four-year jail terms amid sentencing outcry

Jeremy Clarkson was only being silly, says David Cameron

------------------------------------------------------------------------

@ThePoetGeo is a semi retired zeppelin builder with the new model army. His interests include; technology, poetry, liberty fomentation, injustice adjustment, direct democracy design and saving and enlightening dumb animals.

Smash and Grab

Some responses to this week's riots in England:

fire in London
can’t put it out
with Potomac water

© David Caruso

Trouble erupts in English cities
David began writing haiku and tanka after taking a course in Buddhist poetry of Japan under the late Professor William LaFleur. He invites you to browse on over to DavidHaiku.com

~

And here's a couple we 'looted' from amongst our followers:



Chris Lawrence lives with his muse in West Kirby and writes, having been published in many journals internationally and can be found on twitter @clawfish.

~

And, for a different flavour, Anna's poem was already on her blog, and longer than our maximum so we couldn't accept it, but here's an excerpt:
How easy
They succumb to stereotype,
The looters, the arsonists,
The bigot's fodder;
The bigots dream gifted,
Gifted by the very underclass
They wish to further
Marginalise.
Read the whole poem here: What is this?

~

And this from Twitterer Arron Shilling

"Time is short now
the hoods are glowing white
dark moods blind the rats
and glass coppers shield the streets."


~


Related posts
See also: Harvest Time and Dudley Road by Jane James and The morning after by Clare Kirwan

The morning after

Copy writers test fancy names

for the unrest: ‘recreational rioting’?

Newspapers plump for ‘scum’;

PR officers of politicians,

police forces, earnest agencies

spin webs to make point-scoring capital.



The uninsured Asian shopkeeper's

still shell-shocked in the shell of his shop;

the hoody has new trainers but his mum’s

too scared to ask him where he got them;

a dad catches sight of his pride and joy

on cctv and has to make a choice.



Chain store fatcats offset the damages

with more staff cuts, and won’t lose any sleep;

Police officers who held back after all

the complaints, now vilified for holding back,

not holding back the mob; some stoic Sikhs

take up cricket bats ready to defend



families above shops, nerves tuned

for smash of glass or curl of smoke;

insurers calculate the costs to spread

to everyone: the flat-dwellers who fled

with nothing but their lives; the family firm

a smouldering crime scene.



Sharing camera footage of him

and his mates and what they did,

damning, laughed over; Twitter alive

with the chirpings of disturbed birds

in their silver cages and their nests of rags;

police drafted in and dying for a tussle;



the brush and bucket brigade

blitz the streets in brittle war spirit,

and the same questions bubble up

at office water coolers, in government

departments, supermarkets, on phones

and forums and behind closed doors:



What happened? And why?

Are you alright? Were you insured?

Where can we go? How can we protect?

What should we do? Who did this? When

and where will they strike again?

Where were you last night?

© Clare Kirwan

Liverpool and Wirral riots see 50 people arrested

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Clare Kirwan occasionally wears a hooded top but has never broken any windows she didn't own. She performs poetry around Merseyside and blogs as Broken Biro.

Clare says: There are so many articles on this, but I chose one local to me - I wonder how many more disturbances there have been away from city centres and not reported nationally?

Tantrums in the Cradle of Democracy

Germans are making the loans
and bankers are hot on their phones.
The message they’re sending
Is ‘Bankruptcies pending
and ‘ware of mad Greeks bearing stones!’

© Stafford Ray

In pictures: Greece votes amid riots
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Writer of musical plays and reading resources for schools. Wannbe novelist, one completed, two more on the way. Poetry happens when moved, limericks when amused (interchangeable).