Distilled Diplomacy How can agreement be quantified by everchanging politics that benefit so few? One wonders, how can distilled tears of the martyred be cleansed from rubble, drained of spirit and tarnished by magenta? How can diplomacy be truthful in an era of guised greed, nationalistic in tone and vain in nature? But obedience must be solicited as paradigms consume beings flesh and all, into a distilled diplomacy— where any humanity is rebuked, and only rapacity is left. Songs of Revolution are arias sung to taunting winds that fluctuate with wandering opinions. Like dawn break on summer’s morning, there is no reprieve from assured change, but hymns are only sung where consecrated masses sway to collective effervescence primordial, a tambour borne out of discontent and silent shackles ever heavy. For lies are told to appease heavy hearts tempered by bitter oral tradition, lullabies sang to the masses, prayers whispered to the many all waiting for sudden salvation. But revolutionary fevers demarcate warring humanity from mammals many and intricate in existence, where difference will inspire treason and subterfuge beyond mindless decimation, where warring groups divide ever further and individualized dissent is the norm, and songs of slaughter will again proceed revolution radical, assuredly irrational.

Anthony Salandy is a Black Mixed-race poet & writer who has spent most of his life in Kuwait jostling between the UK & America. Anthony has 2 published chapbooks, The Great Northern Journey and Vultures and a novel, The Sands of Change. Anthony is Co-EIC of Fahmidan Journal. Twitter/Instagram: @arsalandy
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative’s Editor, Laura Lee Washburn, has selected July’s poems around the site’s current theme “We’re Speaking” to capture voices pushing back against the current attacks in the U.S. on human rights and on democracy. Citizens of Kansas have an attack on their state constitution on the ballot August 2nd on which we hope they will vote no in order to preserve the Kansas legacy of being a free state in which all citizens have bodily autonomy. We stand in solidarity with all people affected by current rulings from the radicalized Supreme Court.