❖

Lizzy’s face on the papers blowing in the wind
Lizzy’s face on the screens
Lizzy’s face on the street billboard
with a homeless man leaning against it.

Lizzy’s face on the Jumbotron
Lizzy’s face on the defense industry tweets
Lizzy’s face on the arrest warrants
for the criminals who said “Not my king.”

Lizzy’s face on our money
Lizzy’s face in my face
Lizzy’s face on an artillery shell
funded by the British taxpayer
and fired by a man wearing neo-Nazi insignia.

Lizzy’s face on the telly before it cuts out
because there’s no power
because it was either electricity or groceries.

Lizzy’s face on the food banks
Lizzy’s face on the price hikes
Lizzy’s face on the blankets shivering bodies cling to
when they can’t afford to heat their homes.

Lizzy’s face in their mind’s eye
Lizzy’s face in their prayers
Lizzy’s face in their nightmares
as they huddle close together for warmth.

Lizzy’s face on the news man’s face
on the politician’s face
on the banker’s face
on the billionaire’s face
on the warmaker’s face
on the empire’s face.

Lizzy’s face on the nuclear missiles
Lizzy’s face on the drums of war
Lizzy’s face on the melting permafrost
and the gasping oceans and the plastic in our blood.

Lizzy’s face in my chest like a nauseating lump
rising up through my throat and out into the toilet
spraying out my mouth and all over the bathroom
and all over the universe get that dead bitch the fuck out of us.

Puke Lizzy’s face out of our animal bodies
so we can run free like wildebeests hatching hearts and songbird throats
no longer frozen by the bank boys and bastards
and the grayness of the false world they painted in our minds.

Let our animal bodies remember our animal ways
and forget any context wherein Lizzy’s face everywhere made sense.

There are lovers who need loving
and a world that needs saving
and a whole lot of signs
that are in sore need of vandals.

...

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