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Me and Clarice Beckett - bred in Beaumaris

 I could have been born a woman in Somalia

I could have been born a gay man in Iran

I could have been born transgender to Christian Fundamentalists 

I could have been born a poet to ‘white trash’ —

(I use the word advisedly and respectfully: those who do not know who their people are, 

Perhaps I am one

Who escaped on the racks to Grammar

But who still kicks and cries like a c#nt

And does things spellcheck

Would never allow —


Springsteen sang

 “Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train.”)


We must explain to the latter

Cos they don’t know their place

The former know how things are - their apocalypse 


Their loss of faith

Their abandonment by God

Is as nothing


As it would have been were I they

Deprived a voice

Deprived a pen


The racists have a word for them

A word that they think gives them authority 

But all of us are accidents 


And heresy is the only possibility 


As Jesus learned

Not comparing myself to him 

That’s just a trick of English

- the language…


Jah bless


One Love xx



© Malachi Doyle 2022.


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