Kate Young’s poetry has appeared in journals and online. It was also included in Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published with Hedgehog Press. Find her on X @Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk
Nothing Has Changed
After Imagine, by John Lennon
Photo Credits:
Tree Sun: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay
Blue Flowers: FoYu via Pixabay
Children Sand: ThanhTN via Pixabay
Child Poverty: billycm via Pixabay
Hands Doves: NoName_13 via Pixabay
Imagine: gOutier via Pixabay
Ghosts will vaporise and tell you otherwise –
they are wrong.
They’ll feed you visions of advancement,
ask you to taste their driverless cars,
roll a 5g network over your tongue,
savour a lyric penned by AI.
The lie is ferric – spit it out.
How is that imagination John?
You dreamed of borderless, religious-less,
hunger-less nations sharing all the world –
reality is a bullet in the back of Manhattan
a crimson gash ribbled on stone
and crushed in the rubble of Gaza,
a convoy of crater-skulls lining the road
in the ashen remains of Ukraine,
a dull-eyed child absorbed in PVC
on shores that throw back the shingle,
a trudge of commas making no sense.
I let you sing me to sleep,
the oh-so-simple riff of piano keys
lifting, shifting to resolution.
Keep dreaming John, keep dreaming.
Kate Young