The Blue or the Red

The red or the blue?

Those others or you?

You’re told what’s true.

The country or a queue?

You’re in a mosque or on a pew.

You’re letting in all if you let in a few.

You want our country back, don’t you?

No it’s not the same as turning away a Jew.

It was different back then, we had a world view.

You don’t realise what some poor people are going through.

And so we’ll debate the reason for and the number of the dead.

We’ll see women told what to wear on their head.

Spite sent across bandwidth; an internet spread.

A child in Aleppo was just killed in his bed.

Let’s Make America Great Again instead.

Bank on hope or side with dread.

Easily bought or easily led?

Shiny gold or heavy lead,

Rage by fear is overfed.

Is it blue or is it red?

The Sea

A detour, I stopped and sat on

the shingle shore. Grey, save for

some glints shining through and wide

at low tide. I watched and smelled the churn of the sea.

My fingers found a smooth cold stone, 

I lanced it into the unknown,

and I imagined it was me.

I've coasted through the air and

I’ve been to the seabed, skimmed the superficial and

dropped, left only

mini-ripples on top of the blue.

Like the pebble I threw, I've been trimmed by the

eroding; turned nearly to sand

by the thrashing of the current. 

Currently, the pebble that is me is underneath

still. But it will - eventually - be delivered 

back to the beach by the ebb and the flow.

This I know.

As I left, the sun overcame the overcast

and made glimmering shimmies like

a last foray of desperate disco balls.

Before the next cloud falls over the sun, I thought,

One last glance. I thought:

I could be really living, instead of surviving.

I could dance home instead of driving,

and rather than stumbling, I could be diving.