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Writer's picturePhilip Bradbury

The Crimeless Crime


Just fingerprints on the handrail of my memories

The world I knew has lost its smell, it’s shape

Uneasy silences, conspiracies have obscured

It’s a landscape I knew but the grey mist rolled in


The old friend got rabies, turned its claws on me

I’m peaceful, contented, wanting nothing

Then from the mist, the eyes of yellow do peer

My serenity’s burst in a question so small


“Your pass, please sir?” the kind girl asks

My stomach is lit, a fire from nowhere

My brain is stilled. Stunned. Orientation fogged

I have not erred or sinned or done wrong


And that, my friend, is the wire I’m hung

Nothing’s my crime. Doing nothing, I’m damned

Innocent as a fly, ostracised for stillness

The crimeless crime of living in peace


But my neighbour’s terror, he wants on me

Ready to snitch, report, see me flogged

For the whimsy of foreign corporate hunger

For greed, oh greed – greed of cash, greed of slaves



For that we kill our children, businesses and spirit

For a distant stranger’s dream, we stand naked and obedient

In a world that fears a ghost; and won’t light the room

How, my friend, did it happen so quickly, so insanely?


I have no answers ...

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