Response

At first, it was a gun.

Functional, matt-black;

I would buy it in a pub,

ambush them in some

side-street, somewhere.

I’d hear screams of realisation,

then pull the trigger.

Later, it was a speech,

delivered from the dias

of a conference room.

I throw rhetorical devices

at them; they fall to their

knees, weep at the logic

of my argument, admit defeat.

This morning, it could have been

a peace sign, appended to

an Eiffel tower and reposted;

le Tricolore as a
teardrop,

a desktop background, a hashtag.

I could be a Parisian, too; we

all can if we stand together.

In the end, it is words;

my words against their bullets,

my lines I dare them to cross.

No contest, you say. But my words

do not kill; they invite reason,

thought, debate; they meditate

on what has been done. In that
sense,

they have a terror all of their own.

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This post was written by Simon Cockle