For Grenfell Tower Block

I am the tower

I am home

I am family

I am security

I am where safety should be

I am where you can let your guard down

Until…

 

Friction.

Two opposing forces cause a spark

Left in me because too many believe me to be

An eye sore,

The reason you clutch your purse tighter,

A reminder of the unattractive reality of poverty,

When you would much rather

Be left behind the veil of ignorance

Wealth gifts you.

 

So they give me a ten million pound paint job

To cover the cracks of financial inequality

Without actually dealing with the problem

– This becomes the fuel

To the fire left in me by the scornful eyes of the rich

By the powerful

Who measure worth by bank balances

They are the fuel to the fire that grows in me in the quiet, unsuspecting cover of night.

 

But, unfortunately, in this case

The fire is not a metaphor for love

The fire is not a metaphor for passion, for intensity, for purpose, for pleasure.

The fire is a fire

The fire is death

The fire is pain

The fire is destruction

The fire is neglect

The fire is the government, the biggest furnace of corruption

The fire is a life destroying entity

The fire is trauma

The fire is hate

The fire is what happens when we neglect social wounds; such as classism, racism and inequality

For so long

They begin to fester and persist.

 

For I am no more

No more am I the myriad of lives, loved ones, hopes and dreams that inhabited me.

I am now a derelict shadow

That will not be not be ignored, society.

 

Society is the ashes, in which the

Phoenix will rise.