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Picket Lines High & Whitey’s writing ’bout the moon (somewhat after Gil Scott Heron)

that Trump just jailed some child of God
the high & whitey write about the moon
the kid is crying lightning rods
the high & whitey write about the moon

these new romantics keep on scribing, touch type
lyrical lesions, blinded by its filaments meant to light
all of the seasons & hating Coldplay or flying to Wakanda
on an exotic holiday, man that ain’t enough, & loving
Love Island, we know is just a bluff. We keep looking
through their magazines, but find no words of poverty
do they take out the letter ‘v’ & call it an ‘others’ poetry?

those of us from other places, there for the history
in our faces, have bagel mango cheeky Nando poems,
taken just to salve them. But that vial won’t ever measure up
& we will get all Audre Lorde if you offer us that cup
& to end it all a rat done bit my sister Nell
the high & whitey keeps publishing the moon
is there any chance they’ll damn to hell, under a cloud real soon?

Poetry is slowly including more diverse group of poets. But, in general, it is still the white middle class who are replacing the old gatekeepers. At a time when the income of writers is falling dramatically, we are in danger of only seeing those with other economic means holding influential positions. Poems of politics, resistance, class, and poverty rarely make it into the mainstream, as priority is usually given over to the moon, trees and cats, as reflections of what it means to be human.

Peter Raynard is the editor of Proletarian Poetry: Poems of Working-class Lives (www.proletarianpoetry.com). He has written two books of poetry, his debut collection Precarious (Smokestack Books, 2018) and The Combination, a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters, 2018). 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 facebook.com/pg/PicketLinePoets

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