I always wondered how liberals responded as white supremacists systematically established Jim Crow and restricted the black vote. Now I see. They say “isn’t that horrible, but we have more pressing concerns at the moment.” Black people’s oppression is rarely the priority.

Anna Maltby JP I have hoarded The tests That were in The pharmacy And which You were probably Saving For Christmas Forgive me They were negative So accurate And so scarce

My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger. I walked among their old haunts. the home ground where they bled; And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead. #BloodySunday50

Human beings suffer They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.

Ten years ago Garry Wills wrote about America’s gun problem following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. go.nybooks.com/3am8lMq

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol.

Blazing Saddles; People of the land

Me every morning to Twitter:

'Flaming June' painted by Lord Frederic Leighton, 1895.

A poem I wrote after the 2007 fires on Parnitha:

poets.org/poem/epitaph-t…

poets.org/poem/fall-rome

poets.org/poem/epitaph-t… Never not relevant:

Thinking of weary soldiers in Ukraine, of families in flimsy tents in Gaza, on this cold winter night, I remember this poem: poetryfoundation.org/poems/53777/th…

Be advised my passport’s green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.