After Tariq Jahan
After all these years of his passing in that slow-mo riot
there is something that sustains through all that you lost.
I once abandoned a magpie twitching at the kerbside,
in my heart I knew it was gone with all its unsung songs.
To bury the dead we must unearth the roots we are from.
“Go home” he said “Step forward if you want to lose your sons”
Blacks whites and Asians when mixed are monochromes,
to develop a picture and the riots add tears and blood of youth.
In ancient Britain, Celts danced around fire to see spirits,
they painted their skins and raked upon coals to find them.
I hope to god that in the ashes of Britain we find Britain,
I hope to god that the ashes of justice do not leave three dead men.
It is cold in the hearth of a street that screeched those endings,
like an urban banshee that keeps wailing over and over.
“Go home” he said as he collapsed under the weight of home,
“Go home” he said as he collapsed under the weight of loss.
You once told me of the Syrian woman who cooked you eggs and grass,
“this is all you have” you said but her son knew your son had left you.
Take those eggs and hatch hope in the nest of the songs he never sung,
like the magpie I could have saved, I can only write you this my friend,
“This is all I have”
Peace Poet Antony Owen 