Street Art

P1070409 Did I provoke you to use a gun

In school, just because I was young?

Did you see me along with my mates

When you burst in through the school gates?

Did you think it all was a game

That each one would rise up again

Like they do in the video games?

Maybe you thought this would help

You get back at the staff who tried

To put you on the right track.

Maybe you hated authority figures

Thought you could solve things

With your trigger.

Now look at what you have done

A community killed with a gun.

But the state says you may have one

It’s your citizen’s right in the law.

But what about innocents like me

A victim you never cared for or saw?

Did you think my life didn’t matter

You just fancied to see some blood spatter.

Should we really all carry a gun

So when we’re drunk, drugged or want to have fun

We can shoot from the hip

Spray bullets from our grip

From a weapon of death

Kill all before?

But the Second Amendment

States freedom, is to live with a gun

Should you want

But I ask you please to consider

If my death was my freedom

The freedom I want.

I have been shocked as have many around the world at the Florida school shooting. 17 lives ended and there is a big call from young people in particular, for a change in the law in the USA which allows people to own guns. I understand the culture in the USA is very different from in the UK and some people are frightened and feel the gun law cannot be dispensed with – but Australia did it!

The photo is a provocative piece of street art by Bambi, in London, supposedly of the Michael Brown killing in 2014, but I think the picture is relevant here too. It shows an innocent saying don’t shoot. Guns are weapons, whether in the hands of the law or of ordinary people.

I would be interested to know what you think about gun law in general or in your own country.

Words and photo copyright Englepip©

via Daily Prompt: Provoke

Picture from January 2015

Make way: make way

The developers say

As their wrecking balls

Crash down the walls.

Condemned as unfit

The buildings are split

Ridding them of trouble

Turning all to rubble

For once it’s all razed

There’s money to be made

Erecting posh offices

Or executive pads.

Never mind how we feel

The development’s a steal

For those with power

Over the poor.

And I ask

“Have you an inkling

Of the grief we are thinking

When you split our community apart?”

In the East End of London, Spitalfields, many homes and buildings have been demolished and replaced with high cost housing or expensive office blocks. This has tended to price the local people out of the area, break up communities and bring in new residents who have no close ties to the community. Often buildings could have been improved but there is more money in doing them up for a different market or other things. On the positive side, the Street Artists have moved in and taken advantage of bare walls and fencing to display their work. One of my favourites was the madonna-like figure on the end wall behind the hoarding in my photograph above. The area around Brick Lane is a mecca for restaurants and tourists. But for local people who want to stay, it is impossible – it can be over a million pounds for a 2 bedroom apartment! There have been protests against the ‘gentrification’ of the area but money always wins.