A Riot, Posture Of Mutiny, For Nothing Poem by Michael Veremans

They were satisfied to hold a riot,
Gathering in their hundreds
To talk about their purpose
(For they were well versed
In clarifying their furnished beliefs)
Around a popular false bonfire.
Laughing and screaming with each other,
With words and jackets
They protested in the night,
Sitting on concrete walls and curbs
Between sleeping houses
And within the boundaries
Of the police cordon.
But I glared out into the night,
From the crowd, almost helplessly.

I broke through the barricade
And cried “March! ” but no one followed,
Save for my few comrades who stalked
Down the street inflames, infuriated,
Our faces illuminated true
With orange and red.

I stopped an officer
And pulled him from his car.
I put my gun to his head and asked,
“What do you love more,
Your family or this law? ”

“Then forsake your post,
For we love them too.”

When I looked back on the slow riot,
Bathed in a dying light,
The would be insurgents suddenly
Broke out and ran down a side street.
A patrol car, black and white,
Drove the pigeons away in a flutter,
Recalling their lamp light fire
And relieving the rioters
Of their duty to rebellion
Because the enthusiasm had expired,
Though the night desired fire.

My comrades and I, we fled too
Down another side street
But we were not extinguished
By the nightcap of masquerade courage.
We pressed up against a wall
And prayed to the black
To hide us, take us, a flame,
In with the shadows.

A window lit before my wide eyes,
Revolving from the General Song,
Fiery ghosts in the shadows.
And a hammer slid into my hands.

Suddenly, a car passed
Without windows or seats,
Its headlights dirty and dim,
An ambiguous outline
Of the resistance, or police.
But the rusty handle gave way
And we pawed in
Through bullet broken glass,
I met the insurgent driver
And she was a beautiful half-caste
With black and blonde hair.

We were taken down an alley,
To a basement lit
By smoldering heart torches
And phosphorescent bulbs
Where people rebel in themselves
And the heart dies;
Where a blind man
Led idiots by their atrophied arms,
Delivering a fiery speech
With fiery inaction.

I went to light a match
But with a shake of her head
I was intoxicated
With the black and white
Sanctioned sinking uprising.
So when my fire extinguished
I bought into their fading,
Glow-in-the-dark philosophy.
I joined their bonfire
Of Fluorescent inaction
To struggle and push,
Like a riot for nothing.