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Hi everyone, sorry to crash into your inbox so unexpectedly on a Saturday. I don’t usually publish on the weekend, but this poem has been brewing in my mind for some weeks. Now that it’s finally finished, I wanted to share it with this community immediately.
In the Batman movie, The Dark Knight, Alfred Pennyworth says about the Joker:
Some men just want to watch the world burn
The state of the world today and the sheer weight of that observation were two important things that gave inspiration and impetus for this poem.
entire body of work for the past few years has been about resistance and that was the second piece of the puzzle that brought this poem together.I thought of using the Batman meme with the quote above as the picture for this article, but I did not want to diminish or understate the power of the people. I hope this gives you something to think about over the weekend and sparks conversation around your table.
There are those who will seek to tell you that the world is not aflame That destruction is not at your door that this is just a game They will try to minimize the risk of humanity's downfall Hoping you will be fooled and sit staring and enthralled They’ll distract you with bright screens and carefully crafted lies Hiding the smoke that rises in plain sight before your very eyes Whispering comfort in their words polished smooth with deceit While the ground shakes beneath you as it crumbles at your feet Hear me: this is a summons not a song to calm your nerves A trumpet for the watchtower a reckoning that swerves Through vaults of gilded silence where the courtiers convene To harvest your tomorrow and keep the present clean They will rename the flood as weather, rename hunger as a “choice” Rename the whip’s “protection,” choke dissent in a velvet voice They’ll separate the screams by borders drawn in the dust And sell your children futures backed by bonds of worthless rust Do not be lulled by the rhetoric or the stately somber tone That blesses every pipeline every bullet every drone Do not repeat the catechism of the inevitability of fate History is not just prophecy; it’s choices forged too late Look back: in fields where shackles bit and overseers stared A whisper turned to thunder when the first defiance flared In forests carved by fugitives who mapped the night by star In islands where the maroons wrote freedom’s secret charter The ledger of the empire is balanced not with gold But counts of broken bodies and the stories never told Yet still the quiet ember smolders stubborn in the ash Each time a line is drawn in sand another tides it back This is your warning: palaces are built on borrowed breath And standing still is complicity with slow-arriving death They pave the roads with euphemisms kind and neat and bland, But blood keeps seeping upward through the carefully washed sand You must name the arsonists who masquerade as rain You must name the profiteers who privatize your pain Call out the cloaked alliances the treaties signed in smoke Refuse the dictator’s narcotic and his ritualistic jokes Gather in the daylight and gather in the night Not to trade in your despair but to organize your might Turn petitions into practice turn slogans into bread Turn mourning into motion for the living and the dead Build councils where the neighborhoods can set their own decrees Where elders teach the memories and children plant the seeds Where labor learns its leverage where rivers win reprieve Where care is not a charity but the power we conceive Expect no savior crowned in light descending from the sky The halo is a circle made when hearts and hands unite The miracle is logistics: water clean and stoves that burn The strategy that holds a strike the courage not to turn And when they call you radical remember who you are Descendant of the fugitives who charted escape by a star Inheritor of uprisings of drums beneath the ban The future’s stubborn architect a many-handed plan Let the sirens of the epoch wail honest, raw, and clear We do not fear their warnings; WE are what they fear For once the crowd grows fluent in the grammar of the street Castle doors will remember what a million footsteps mean This is the line, the last neat fable, and it ends tonight No gilded calculus can ever purchase back the light Refuse their measured doom, their managed, tepid peace Instead let us choose freedom where the human heart can breathe Raise your banner, low and steady, not for pomp or show For bread, for water, shelter, truth, and all that we are owed For forests unincinerated, oceans that will endure For bodies free of shackles and for safety at our door And when the dawn at last arrives not gifted but attained It will wear the names of many who refused to be contained The world is not a game piece not a title to be claimed It is a covenant we forged, a truth we have proclaimed So friend heed this warning it is a map and an alarm The danger is enormous but so is your mighty arm When linked with another, and another, you will see How empires learn the oldest truth: the people make decree
Bio: Brian Sankarsingh is a poetic firebrand, a sharp, thoughtful storyteller who walks the crossroads where Caribbean folklore, social justice, and the human condition collide. He is a truth-seeker who questions political tribes, challenges lazy platitudes, and writes with a deep pulse of empathy, always pushing for nuance whether you're exploring grief, cultural identity, or the monsters that haunt cane fields and hearts alike. He blends advocacy and art seamlessly. He is part historian, part philosopher, part bard, driven by a hunger to illuminate overlooked stories and empower marginalized voices.
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