Omnipresence

Politics rule our lives.
It’s in the food we eat, the water we drink.
Pesticides and genetically modified crops
jostle for control of fertile lands and the potential
to affect our bodies like lawmakers in
corridors of power.
Hormone injected animals wait their time
inside cooped up enclosures similar to prisoners
in far flung deserts – Abu Ghraib, Evin – except no one
hears cries in chicken coops. Too drugged to know
even when the butcher comes in and slits their throats.
Gods’ words whispered when he feels like it.

Human rights are political and has nothing to do
with rights. Not anymore.
People killed by drones – that’s alright. Collateral.
They got in the way. But terrorists killed to end the horror
in another country, no no, their rights were violated.
People rush in to protect the perpetrators.

The decision to decide is politically ignited.
Its politics to be dumb and seek
weapons of mass destruction in places
most unlikely yet the oil makes it all worthwhile.
Testing grounds for new missiles.
Arms dealers make billions while countries
are torn apart and lives left to rot.
People die like stray dogs.
Millions displaced all over the place.
Death on the high seas trying to get to safety,
only to find on reaching it was all a myth.
That’s politics.

Our beliefs and clothes are political.
Religious decrees to cover up in shrouds
lest someone sees and gets tempted to rape.
Such weak minds have men, but
women are to blame
for everything and more
except when we are
legitimately raped,
as some ‘wise’ man once commented, then
political correctness is thrown out the door.

Our speech patterns and language are informed
by politics. Say the right thing and we are in.
Maybe a picture in the papers smiling with
the right crowd.
Say the wrong thing and the cops will be
after us. More pictures in the papers.
Snarling men in uniform beating, kicking
dragging innocent us away to somewhere else,
someplace safe until we are deemed
socially fit to return. If there’s
anything left to be returned.

Vaccine mandates forced on the public.
Decision makers turn away as the dead pile up,
pile up, pile up.
Not their problem not their lives.
Experiments in a deadly game played by a few
with change to spare. Who cares anyway?
They were just getting in the way.
They didn’t matter. They were
nothing. More could be churned out in labs
if required.

Mothers reduced to helplessness as rights groups
encourage, goad, applaud
stuffing young bodies with puberty blockers. Deny
their birth gender. Question the safety or oppose and get
cancelled. Feeble voices drowned by
screeching mobs. Counselling? Not required, except
to get our heads examined for
refusing to let our son our daughter transition
to the preferred gender of the moment.

Calls for women only spaces repudiated by the noise of a
strange new generation that doesn’t allow for questioning.
No discussions, no explanations. Theirs
the right to choose while women’s rights
crushed, cancelled. We watch helpless as men who
didn’t amount to anything as men are lauded as winners
in women’s sports, given a free ticket to exploit,
harass, humiliate and strip us of all that we are. But who cares.
That’s the way the world turns.

Women’s liberation no longer relevant. Shoved into shadows
as men demand changes. Our body’s language denied,
words erased. No referendum to ask
half the worlds’ population if
they were in agreement with the alterations.
No discussions no talks.
Just enforcement or be called out for racism or fancy
new phrases used to silence. Minorities rule.

Banks collapse, crash, crumble
falling like dominos while those in power
watch it happen and pretend to be concerned.

Politics rule the courthouses,
the whore houses and the houses of Gods.
All of them.
Is there anything left?

The world spins on the wishes of a few
politically stable, economically powerful
consolidating their rights
over lives of the multitude who,
stupid and brainwashed, believe the political lies.

Our friends are political beings,
our names partisan tags.
We are discussed in political circles
on who we are related to and rejected if there’s
no connection to power and authority
to bank on.

Yes, marriage is political.
Lands, property divided, families united by the same.
Peaceful protests have a political reason.
There’s politics in everything we do

including the color of our skin, the shape of our face,
our bodies. Lighten with skin whitening creams
inject poisons erase lines, slice, dice and reconstruct.
Enhance, sculpt create something else.
It doesn’t matter that we look like
someone else, a paler version of what we could be.
It might get us a good husband, a respectable job, win
an election, or better, millions of followers on social media.

Dying is a political act.
It may not be a cause we like yet who cares
for the herd.
Our brains are told it’s good
to die for a cause. Any cause.
Someone else has to live so we bite the dust
and hope they appreciate as the bullets
tear up our flesh letting the earth drink us in, drink us in
drink us in.

Forcing ones’ way on another, all political until
we are strangled by it all and the time to vote approaches.
                          But destroying a vote by refusing to elect
anyone is also a political act so few
choose to exercise.

Shirani Rajapakse

Author bio

Shirani Rajapakse writes poetry and short stories. She’s the author of six books including Chant of a Million Women winner 2018 Kindle Book Awards, USA as well as Gods, Nukes and a whole lot of Nonsense and I Exist. Therefore I Am, 2022 and 2019 State Literary Award winners, Sri Lanka. The latter was also shortlisted for the 2019 Rubery Book Awards, UK. Rajapakse’s work has won and been placed in other competitions. Her work appears in many journals and anthologies.

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