I’m
not offended by the fact that others
aren’t
the same as me:
how
the fuck could I be?
Regularly
the
only one in the room:
can’t
recall if Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou
advises
not to be that, but I never had a choice.
Grew
up always knowing I’d not be one of the boys,
never
certain of unqualified acceptance as a girl:
there
are days I feel as if it isn’t just rooms but the world
that
there’s no-one else like me in,
and
I don’t mean I’m unique,
I
don’t mean I’m artisan, handmade, bespoke, boutique,
I
mean the world feels like a funfair
where
I’m wheeled in as the freak,
accepted
as a turn because I learned to entertain you,
a
lust-object to chasers who say girls like me are ‘angels’
when
they don’t care for our halos
but
the things between our legs,
cause
when a chick has dick plus tits who gives
a
shit about her intellect? Now,
if
I can deal with this day after day, night after night,
why
are you so angry that some people just...aren’t
white?
Because
that’s what it’s about: don’t try
to
hide behind religion, don’t say
you’re
not racist, that you just object to Islam,
because
if that’s the case then why were your mates
casing
the gurdwara?
Sikhs
aren’t Muslims. This is basic.
You
lot really should work harder
at
learning to distinguish one brown person from another
but
why try, when the one thing you’re
not
blind to is their colour?
And
just as you deny that you’ve selective colour vision,
you
lie and claim you even have an LGBT division,
when
nothing else backs those initials
but
your cynicism:
I
missed the running battle
when
you gathered in Newcastle,
because
I was lying back on
a
couch, wearing blackened tanning
goggles,
having IPL
(intensed
pulsed light beams) fired at my face
and,
yes, it hurts like hell,
but
doesn’t feel like the disgrace
I
felt when I had to cross the street
to
get away from you
the
way I’d hang out in the library
when
I was back at school
because
I knew you owned the yard
but
didn’t own the future:
sure,
you were nasty, you were hard,
and
I was just a loser
who
wanted to be Kitty Pryde
instead
of Wolverine,
but
I was going somewhere.
Never
told you about my dream
because
I knew that boys like you interpret
difference
as a weakness:
I
kept it close, I kept it secret,
but
I knew that I’d achieve this.
Still
I crossed the street when you pitched up
mob-handed
in my city,
munching
on free fry-ups
from
the welcoming committee
at
a bar which I won’t name
(but
which pretends it’s Gotham, shittily).
You
were drinking, cussing, bussed-in
from
as far away as Brighton,
all
just here for a ruck, it wasn’t just me
that
was frightened.
On
the bus back home apologists insisted
you
were peaceful:
but
you didn’t look calm, plotted up
down
there by the cathedral,
and
you didn’t look zen, shirtless,
shouting,
on the evening news:
though
that’s not surprising. Half-ten
and
already on the booze,
and
you claim that you’re defending
all
that’s good in our society?
Just
what is it you’re protesting
against
– sobriety?
There’s
nothing you can ever say that’ll enlighten me
because
you live in the dark ages,
even
dress up as crusaders,
burn
Korans while never understanding
what’s
between their pages,
the
quotes you use selected
to
prove it’s twisted –
but
I bet that you eat shellfish
and still claim to be a Christian
(Leviticus
11:10 forbids that – why not check it?).
You
won’t prove that you know the truth
by sampling riffs from holy books,
but
they say we’ll know you by your fruits
and
what you bear is rotten
before
it’s even off the tree.
Maybe
you’ve forgotten
the
story about Muhammad Ali
when
he refused the draft?
What
he said to reporters,
whenever
they would ask
why
he wouldn’t go to Vietnam,
swap
gloves for trigger fingers,
was
that no-one in the Viet Cong
had
ever called him ‘nigger’.
You’d
probably deny it,
but
I think it’s pretty classy,
and
that’s why I’ll never march beside you:
because
no Muslim called me ‘tranny’.
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