Dark Room

(A comment on the hypocrisy of so-called multiculturalism).

We are not multi-cultural
neither you nor I,
merely atheist and zealot shackled,
singularly suspicious, doubly wary,
you of my painted skin
me, your voluminous robes.
I hear the barbed vowels that
you cast to the quickening wind,
which cuts to ribbons
my shell-shocked hospitality.
Quietly I show my bravery
by plotting your final days
behind thick oak doors, camouflaged
in sugary platitudes.
Remember what the common cold
did to the Martians, a generation ago.
Empires fall,
and our futile resistance
will then reveal your olive shadows
as nothing,
but paper shapes of last night’s
nightmare.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2012