You dance with what you’ve got
he shouts, the pub landlord treating
free speech like a football thrown in
‘76 by a Hail Mary redneck – a bomb in
the name of sport – when allowing all
these expressions of honest hate in
The Year of the Trump is not a game.
This place is not a home but neither
is it the land of the free: private and
public more than a line drawn in the sand
or other shifting shit on a floor. We are
all of us renegades if we defer silence
to any allowed noise; as if a room full of these
guys have got the right to speak about and
sign away the rights of much better dancers.
Mike Ferguson
pic Claire Palmer
Sources:
Apocalyptic Annunciation – poem by Rupert Loydell
America’s Game: 1976 Oakland Raiders – TV programme
Article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, The Guardian 24.1.17