Sometimes You Have to Write Out
The Rage For Hope to Breathe
Azam Bulbulia
These Leaders?
Or has the last jester fallen from grace
and my faith in fairness become denuded.
Those Leaders?
No, Puppets, I elect,
to a minority that seethes in power’s cruelty,
held prostrate, half-alive, at a lifeless altar
drinking the blood of truth’s assassination;
only skinless bones scraped to the edge by
silver and gold.
Those Masters?
How it rankles my soul that love taught
me wisdom, yet life schooled bitterness.
These Masters?
No, Slaves, I proffer,
chained to a colour-bar of uniform white;
of banks and robbers, and fraud and lies;
of money and greed, reaping only anguish.
The plantations they seed, the traded souls,
ruined in disgrace.
Those Priests?
I rage that angels die mute, yet the choral
of bigotry clamours, hateful, godless even.
These Preachers?
No, Devils, I pray;
of the church, and its book of ignorance;
of a chosen people and tents of despair;
and the minarets that summon madness.
Three faiths, much falsehood, gods grieve,
and children still suffer.
Those Kings?
If I rape the mind of justice in divine right
I torture her spirit for succession’s pleasure.
These Kings?
No, Clowns, I crown,
strutting in nakedness warmed by privilege,
vulgar in its violence to democracy’s child,
oppressing song with the tyrant’s insolence.
Humanity endeavours the birth of equality,
yet servants smother.
But, we Dreamers!
We must survive the rapacious corruption,
Sometimes You Have to Write Out
The Rage For Hope to Breathe
ending its reign of tyranny with our love.
We Dreamers!
Yes, poet-warriors, I vow;
fashioning from soulless pillars of profit,
soon scorched, splintered then destroyed,
a bright new world, braver in imagination,
extravagant in its compassion, unashamed,
humiliating history.
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Azam has been writing poetry for many years, and in late-2021 he started submitting his work for consideration for publication. In early-2021, Azam left his career as a lawyer in Sydney, Australia to devote his life wholly and solely to literature and poetry. Azam is currently finalizing his first fiction manuscript for submission for publication.
The first of Azam’s poetry was published in Poetry Pacific 2021 (68). Azam has also recently been awarded commendations in the W B Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia 2020 and the Tom Black Memorial Poetry Award 2021 (Australia).
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