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Poems & Creative Writing

You Me Us

Louise Taylor – PhD Candidate with School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast

YOU

You are another me and I see you well

I wince at your inaction, your inertia, your intangible legacy of non-plussed, nonchalance

Your mysteriously, vibrantly, deafeningly silent, non- participation in anarchic anti-apocalyptic, protests for life preservation

Share your secrets, share your wisdom, bestow me with your disconnection, resurrection and inane, rumblings and fumblings of non-love

I raucously rage and cognitively riot at your carelessness, your carefreeness, your blissful, wistful ignorance

You breathe, I breathe

You bleed, I bleed

You die, I die

I see YOU clearly and not at all

Business as usual or despair all around

We are each other and we are dangerously alive.

ME

I am mad, many know it, few disbelieve it and I wholeheartedly embrace it

This madness is my haven, because the sea of sentiments are swishing, swirling and unleashing a wildness that only a mother can contain

My mother – the earth

She holds me

She scolds me

She guides ME home

“Who?” she challenges “Could be sane at a time like this?”

Let the witches cackle

Let the unruly women rise like the swelling, pulsating, ravenous, furious seas

Let the emotions explode forth and allow the oppressed, battered, bruised and beaten feminine to rip through my mind, my body and my soul

We need it now more than ever- we need mad warrior women

We need maternal wrath

I am me, I am you, I am us

And this is wrong!

US

“Disturb the comfortable” the priest declared in our earth heating meeting

The goosebumps made their presence known, to show me the way

We must disrupt, disobey, alarm and disarm

We must impede, confront, alter, revolutionise and transcend

The earth is not in danger, we are

The earth will persevere, we won’t

The earth has been whispering and now she wails- like a banshee she is wailing

Eventually she will weep.

She warned us, she kept telling us, she tried to save us, but we didn’t listen

We kept raping, pillaging, murdering, hoarding and rewarding ourselves for harming our mother

There is no US when we keep doing this

Who killed us in the end?

They did