Ray Willmott

WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL?		USER NATION
Well-meaning people ask me now: Why didn't you tell someone? But I thought the whole world knew: that it was branded on my forehead; that the trees hissed it as I passed; the house walls whispered it; my humiliation, my shame. Too abashed to confess, I wished for a felon's blanket and the earth to cover me, for wasn't this sin against nature mine? How slowly childhood dragged by waiting nightly for the police to bang at my bedroom door.		Afraid they couldn't read our minds, they poured in researchers, resources, called in the armed forces, but we galloped away like charmed horses - user nation, survivor nation. They couldn't understand our language, dubbed it a word salad sandwich, as if we were foreigners, as if we were a separate nation, user nation, survivor nation. Their voices spoke for us, in a ward-round chorus, but they would not listen: they gave us the treatment and a bottle to piss in. We told them it's a war zone, with the bridge falling down, but they invaded our space, claiming we're borderline cases. We should take it up with the United Nations, User nation, survivor nation. We are a Chechnya, scattered like debris, in our bomb shelter hearts, we are learning to be free, so here we are in simultaneous translation, user nation, survivor nation.
A Collection of 24 of Ray's magnificent poems entitled "Easier Dead than Son" is available from Islington Forum, Shelburne House, 2 Shelburne Road, London N7. Price is £2 plus 50p p&p - or £1.25 overseas.