Hate

I've been thinking a lot lately
About hating
What eats at the heart of hate
Because you know
I hate people every day
I hate tourists on Oxford Street
I hate children on the tube
And I hate slow walkers
Stopping me getting to my train
I wanna grab their faces
Say with all that rages:
'Get out of my fucking way'

But I don't
Because I know
My hatred is a ghost
It's a quick-flicked switch
A brief-lit wick
It's a fake shade of hate
Just a frustration of place

And don't get me wrong
I'm not a saint
I dislike a fair few people
But that's not the same as hating
That's not the same
As wanting to stamp
On their faces

Because haters always
Gonna hate, they say
And in some places
If you ain't got hatred
You ain't got status
So let's play with
The face of hate

Hate me for a moment
Hate everything I am
Hate me because I am different to you
Hate my words and my brothers too

Hate me for my body
That ends at my fingertips
Hate my skin, my pigmentation
Hate me for the sensations
I share with another in bed

Then take your hate away
And make it something great
Nurture your hatred
Feed it and mould it like clay
Stoke at its embers
Until its coals glow red
Sculpt it like glass being blown
Until it fits the shape of your soul
And hate will heat you in the cold
Hate will be there when you're alone

And at this point I would speak
Of the crimes of hate
Of screaming ugly at a woman
In a magazine
Of a woman in Iran stoned
Because she was raped
Of misshapen faces
And mistaken shame
And yes, this poem is about hate crime
But it's also about why
It's about Cameroon, Uganda and Russia
It's about a neighbour hating another
It's about men deciding on abortion rights
And Europe losing the right-wing fight
It's about LGBT, it's about immigrants
It's about antisemitism in Hungary
And Pegida rising in Germany
It's about Orlando
It's about Britain First and the EDL and the Printemps Francais
And a black boy shot on the streets in the USA
It's looking at a human race
That sometimes seems
Consumed and wasted
By hatred

It's standing up to that
And saying
I am not afraid