Poem: Let Me Tell You About Them
Kevin Higgins

The teenagers we shot yesterday
were shot responsibly through the eye
with plain-speaking dum-dum bullets,
manufactured in Fife, or taken down
with SR 25 sniper rifles flown
heroically in from Orange County.
Many of these so-called protestors
specifically arranged to be shot in the back,
just to make us look bad.
The gas canisters our people threw
were entirely rational, and legal,
like the Boer firestorm the kaffirs
brought down on themselves at Sharpeville,
or the best-of-British ambush
that rubbish walked into at Derry.
The one rogue canister which lost
its mind and finished up in a tent
beside an eight month old baby,
who, sadly, also expired, is currently under investigation
and expects to be cleared of all wrong doing,
unlike the baby who we’ve already found guilty.
There is no such thing as Palestinians.
Just some Arabs who used to live here
and think they still do.
The keys they wave in the air
no longer open any doors.
They are a rumour you foolishly believed,
now we’ve moved our eternal capital
to what used to be
their front room.
17-05-2018

Image from here
Kevin Higgins

Kevin Higgins

@KevinHIpoet1967

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He teaches poetry workshops and is a poetry critic with The Galway Advertiser. Kevin has published five full collections of poetry, most recently, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland". Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, will be published by Salmon this summer.

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