#protest writing

lines 41-68, “High Tide on Chelsea Pier” (last stanza) by A.W. West. part of a collection performed over the span of four days in New York City during the LA riots

What is Sin? I can point you to what catechism you choose Or I can tell you this. The unnamed man Who vandalized and killed the Holy Thorn Distilled an act of speech with just one aim: To hurt its lovers’ hearts. In actual fact The worst things ever said to me were things I heard said to my mother. To profane A thing someone holds holy is to take Their soul in effigy and burn it, so it does Not matter then if you were only careless. Paradise has been wiped off the map. The inferno’s wave swept over, and the still- Frame frames of burned-out cars mid-flight Still sign their silent testament of ash To what carelessness means. Do you hear me? But it gets worse. All I can do is write A verse as blank as my expression is On contact with the boasted atrocities Done in my name. They would, quite literally, Destroy the world sooner than have to see People they hate escape their suffering. The people they hate are holy. Nero burns His tiki torches in Charlottesville, and thinks He’s good, cause Snopes debunked that faulty tale That said he fiddled while Rome burned. He’s not. Those torches were people, and now they’re witnesses. Thick clouds of witness boil across the sun. Don’t spit your decalogues at suffering souls, Don’t pour contempt on how they name themselves, Don’t roadblock their escapes from cruelties, Don’t jeer and scoff, lest you turn and find yourself An arsonist, or an idiot with a match.