Loose Lips

In the color room in Manchester  / nesting amongst the scraps / she coughed up a menagerie / with thicker strokes / filling herself up on bubblegum trees / bizarre and beautiful / a time when hair was rebellion / when people shouted wear a hat / to show you up or shove you down / and my Gran kept her lips in the jam pot
 
In a sitting room in Bethnal Green / the gruff voice survived / pointing out where the breaks should be / amongst the bodiless / women knitted socks for sons / and kids played on tips / the only greening in a name / as people ate their pets for Christmas dinner / and my mother stained her lips with beetroot
 
In a sick room in Connecticut / listening to the radio / an old woman says / she’d just eaten a teaspoon of toothpaste / to fool herself that she was full / and a young woman was snatched from life / running along a manmade river / and suddenly I find / I can’t recite my own poems / and my lips are bloodless
 
But we shouldn’t have to eat our feelings / or watch our children go to war / we shouldn’t have to walk down the street with a key knuckle duster / or skip our silence into rivers / or have it buried underground /so let’s all draw our red lines on our lips / and dare anyone to cross them

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