Patrick Connors’ Reading

Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map.  He contributed to Bottom of the Wine Jar, published by SandCrab Books in 2017.

Other publications include Blue Collar Poetry; Tamaracks; and Tending the Fire, a new chapbook by the League of Canadian Poets.   His first full manuscript is forthcoming.

Order
With a Shoutout or Two to Rudyard Kipling

I’m not here to change the world order
nor interested in revolution, just evolution:
where we all grow and work together
to help bring order to the world.

If anyone doesn’t have enough to eat,
anywhere in a world full of plenty.
If anyone cannot be all they desire to be,
to grow and become the divine design.

If anyone does not have access to health care,
essential service as a basic human right.
If anyone does not live in security,
the dignity and respect of their humanness.

Even I, as a White, Anglo, Hetero,
fully able, highly educated, 1st world Christian
cannot understand why we won’t accept difference,
and embrace the beauty we all have in common.

If you are ready to believe it’s time for anyone who
realises these conditions to realise these conditions,
from the ones you love the very most
to the one you think your worst enemy.

If you are ready to believe it’s time to change
things for the better before they get worse—

Then yours is the world and everything in it
my sisters and brothers.
All the hopes and dreams and pains and sorrows
and sufferings and joys:

You are now part of it.
Especially, if you weren’t before.

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