Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks September 2015 (Internet) | Page 19

Privacy Settings
Mel White
If justice is a balance I’m the child
who cannot reach the pivot but cries, ‘Miss, I didn’t do it.’
I’m the woman who would burn as a witch
but not confess a crime she did not commit;
the tortured man who’d suffer but not implicate another –
who did not deserve his protection.
If I used this medium – writing poems and reading them –
to channel this rage, allowed emotion soak this page,
my words might assuage the frustration
that turns my blood to lava, but I hold my tongue.
I will not descend to the lowest rung
on the ladder of decency, because I believe intimacy is sacred,
and my internal privacy is set to friends I can count on one hand,
and though we’ve crossed the fine line between love and hatred,
and you spill lies like red wine that leave a stain on my character,
red wine won’t discolour my veins.
If pens are mightier than swords, keyboards trump machine guns.
How many ears have you burned and minds turned
against me? Virtual strangers befriend us.
We invented walls to defend us – keep enemies in or out –
but you’ve breached my wall to shout at me in capitals.
If a problem shared is halved, and halved again each time it’s aired
your woes must be sub-atomic: simple mathematics.
But though your amateur dramatics would fill a psychiatrist’s
casebook,
and you’re washing your dirty linen on facebook
words will not be my weapon.

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