It’s winter, so here’s a poem written last summer, but is as cold as winter weather

July
This year July was clouds and gusty winds
This year
July rained ice and colourless

A July of death
No tombstones
because those who died were fed to the sea
ashes flung faraway, without ceremony

July this year
Flowers withered before they bloomed
July
This year blanketed with coldness
a mist knitted from nightmares

Whispers of the powerless as the powerful rattle
Rattle their riches
Dangle their leftover bones and fat
over those squirming in the ditches
fingers knotted and knuckled
grasping grasping
grasping and gasping
gasping

This July was filled with despair

Hoard and torture
This July is a July of blindness
Forgetfulness
Blindness to the robbed
Forsaking humanity
people trudging through sludge everyday, unseen

Does the devil
watch us for millions of years
watch us laugh, love and find joy,
watch us torture and disappoint, take and destroy,
then
when the time is right and near
find the one weakness, one unbearable fear,
one thing, one person we each hold dear
And

In July
The flowers ceased to grow
And withered before they bloomed

— The death of Liu Xiaobo

Written in desperation; written in grief; written in anger and written in tears after news broke that Chinese literary critic, poet and peaceful fighter against an authoritarian regime, Liu Xiaobo, died in captivity, 13 July, 2017.