Poetry is Peng - December

F*cking Hilarious

Last laugh in the bath

Immodest as a French headscarf

Sipping a glass of Super Malt

Sugarless like table salt

Tussock and tuft, concrete and brush

All aboard a TFL bus

Looking through a close window

Country push by

The war lies tired on its side

The boys and girls split open their uniforms

To slide

Nude white flags, down the hill

Into the nettles

Omnilateral loss, all sides

The nuns, imams and slags

Nights of failure stitched on faces, bags

Now the rifles are full of earwigs,

Kabir’s doe is done dodging arrows

My big toe is twirled in foam

Last laugh for an audience

Of toothbrushes

Arse on porcelain, sat alone

Cheeks sunk and crushed

Soaking in the pleasure of finishing first

Consolation prize,

Sweet kisses, not without the gristle though,

Brittle bristles of tinsel, thistles and mistletoe

Needing a nondescript Him

As the wrestler needs the gym

For a life predicated on gains

The fight, salt and ring

For the body you’ve been renting

Last laugh,

The suds are sparse,

The water tepid

The bulb burns harsh

Farcical, the tennis ball unhit

By another racket

Trails on

Came home melon-heavy

Thought in pyjamas,

Magic wanded it, gift wrapped it

Congealed like blood in the packet,

Nobody expected, made no racket

Tired from pulling splinters,

resolved to attack it

Like really shrapnel and flak it

He came and left, grin buckling, 

You left the money

Decided to go

I love to say ‘I-told-you-so’,

God knows,

Watch you gorge on crow

I pull the plug, 

Hear glubglubglub

Wave home the soap, skin and suds

I held them in, was sympathetic

Spared them from hearing,

Traded Nos for anaesthetic,

The tap ran sloshing,

Low-key cheering

Home alone,

Out the bath

Dripping still

I force a laugh

Mohammed Zaahidur Rahman

Purest Land 

My motherland was born from the fractures of an Empire.

It was born on top of the skull and bones of those who lived there.

My motherland was the salvageable piece of paper after it’s ripped in two,

But what is in a motherland if you’re estranged.

A stranger there, 

a stranger here 

too white to be brown…too brown to be white,

what is the motherland if you can’t speak the mother tongue,

for what is use in not knowing from where you come.

We get told stories from different times,

what they did to my motherland is a hidden crime,

so we pretend we don’t know and we pretend we don’t care, 

we remain blind to what we don’t want to see, so blissfully unaware.

Long division, life lasting partition. 

Unsafe in your home, unsafe in the streets, 

your friend is your enemy, you’ll never be complete. Memories can be haunting laced in nostalgia, 

would it ever leave you seeing your land on fire.

My motherland is unstable, 

new country old feud, 

a nation built on a bloodstained foundation. 

My motherland divided forced histories largest migration.

My motherland will always be mourning because wounds left over years become scars. 

What can you say when something dreamed up as an image of purity becomes little more than a graveyard.

Saleha Latif

You’re not white, why bother?

Do you ever sit & wonder that you’re always feeling inferior

That despite everything you do, others will always be superior

You do everything in your power to make your mark

Yet in an instant you’re left out there, alone in the dark

Do you ever feel that you could do nothing more

But the only reward you get is a finger to the door

Have you ever sat and wondered how little some people need to try

They make an impression from their very first hi

Do you ever think about how far you could go

If you manned up & grew a bit of an ego

There must’ve been times you thought you’ve given it your all

For someone to sweep in & make you feel oh so small

If you’ve never felt this way I’ll tell you why

You’re a product of the reality of white privilege

We live in a system which goes beyond unfair

Where the colour of your face determines your welfare

If you’ve never felt this way & you’re not even white

It’s because your Dad’s reached for himself a special height

The chances of that are one in a million

So count yourself lucky for you’re no ordinary civilian

White privilege is so true & so rude

Us people of colour are just quite simply screwed

Do you ever sit & wonder that you’re always feeling inferior

SThat despite everything you do, others will always be superior

White privilege is real & will never end – accept it, period.

Muhammad Gangat

@torturingthoughts