G68 – So I Protest

By creating lines
context surrounds us
and I finally manage to get signed.

I rant and rave.
I write angry letters –– they are never published.

So I protest the rest, and I wind up undone,
protestant testosterone.
Because my heart could not spell the right frequencies,

my guilt, hiding my innocence,
waves a red flag for surrender,
a white flag for charging bulls.

The outcome is a fixed variable
yet you continue as if my pain meant nothing to you.

Your faith, your size, your wonder. Give me back my heart.
The sounds echoing long, into the night
while deaf stars blink overhead, mocking us both.

But nothing changes incendiary words
against the hated.


Gary Barwin, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Catherine Heard, Kit Dobson, Andrew Topel, Satu Kaikkonen, Andréa Ledding, Alice Robinson, Lesley Bell, Warren Dean Fulton