[7. Violence: Paedo-affective]
(slam declension)

But think about the children, super cute children,
mute children, with uncommonly big eyes,
children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen
what no child’s eyes should see, children naked
as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles,
preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies
and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities
and birth defects, children in an instant
blown up, grown up, orphaned, homeless,
hard up, hopped up, ganged up, pimping
on bright Continental terraces and in dark
dingy rooms their bang bang sisters, who are
children too, all children, of GI boom boom,
of R & R, rock & ruin, rape & run and have you
ever fucked a green man, girl, you’ll fly so high
you’ll see stars going boom boom, boom, boom.

Or some of them, somehow, break free, you’ll see
them in red crescented refugee camps, with
bowl cuts and fly-swarmed eyes, eyes that have seen
what no etc.; some somehow accepted into Western,
Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD)
countries where, before long, they’re given new,
WEIRD names, and there picked on, picked last, left out,
looked through, looked at, looked at too long,
called slant or chink or nip or ching chong
(eyes stretched to flat-line squint) or told they stink,
their house too, their food — what’s that even in it?
(hide your dogs, quick!) — whatever, ha ha, you don’t belong,
go back to where you came from.

Or exoticised, the girls, Hello-Kitty’d,
yellow-faced, extolled for almond eyes and
white-adjacent skin, genetically slim, with
waists two hands could circumscribe
as though designed for certain discernments …
Hypersexualised — and they are children.
(And the boys — the men — also in their
yellow bodies — brawnless, gormless, beardless
or Fu Manchu’d, good at maths, computer games,
maybe even kung fu, which, though, come on,
in a real fight … 
                                                         — in turn desexualised.)

Never fully anything. Essentialised
into nothing, ever-orphaned from
mother country and tongue, generations
of family and flailing net-ropes of filial piety —
three degrees of piety, five failings —
where what we risk our lives and bring you here
to study, what is it, Communications? Where
you think you so good you can come here
and say ‘thank you’ to your parents?

For cleaner guilt and adulteration, of course,
chase the dragon, shoot the horse.

WEIRD, this place, which, these children know,
is no place, not their place, which has them
represent — but who? and what? what for? — for
if not white nor are they of colour, not fully, 
more (or less) off colour, off white, their concerns —
like all things made in Asia — inferior,
knocked-off, mass-manufactured, low-rent.
Think of the children, trying, playing their part,
which is no part, or a rote, token part,
a strenuous decor, to be praised, paid, patronised,
their names mispronounced as though being done
a favour, and they are, and thank you, really, for
even trying, while being impressed upon
re Vietnam on our recent trip with its beautiful
people with their palm hats and their resilience
and, I hope it’s okay to say, their unbelievable
capacity for forgiveness and what if not this is
assimilation (though not acceptance —
no amount of East–West fusion achieves that) —
having it, all of it, be okay, I suppose,
accepting it all, forgiving all, taking heed
and being sensitive to all, being unbelievably
composed, above all, composed.


 
[8. Violence: Geopolitical / Historical / State Conflictual / Territorial / Socio-political / Ideological / Sexual / Physical / Carceral / Chemical / Communal / Tribal / Psychological / Judicial / Cultural / Structural / Spiritual / Dictatorial / Oligarchical / Genocidal / Collateral / Domino Theoretical / Dialectical Materialist / Social Darwinist / State Terrorist / Eugenist / Imperialist / Colonialist / de Mission Civilisatrice / Ethnonationalist / Settler Nativist / Scholastic / Scientific / Educative / Bureaucratic / Economic / Hegemonic]



[Uncomposed]

Image: Flickr