Pride is still a Protest

It’s that time of the year.

Where fake care runs through.

Giving a passing sneer.

As they extract money from you.

Changing backgrounds for Pride.

Feeding your gullible eyes.

Taking you for a ride.

Spooning putrid fetid lies

Begging for those papers.

To free your guilt away.

Living off of your labour.

So they can thrive on tax-free days.

Leeches they keep on sucking.

Bleeding a community dry.

It’s broad daylight mugging.

Stealing trust from the supply.

Syringe in hand stabbing deep inside.

Extracting to feed their bottom line.

Making the wounds rotten and wide.

Dusting bodies with redesigned grime.

Changing a logo to fool you all.

Getting what they truly desire.

Refusing to hear the screams and calls.

From the cheap corporate branded hires.

The corporate crook feeding coal into the addiction machine.

Swamping the streets with high percentage alcoholism.

The flow of abuse rides in the carriage of the obscene.

As blood and flesh runs on the concrete of cannibalism

City councils bending to the thrusts of dust.

When the cockroaches come out to play.

Following scripture as old as dust.

Where you can’t show being lesbian, trans or gay.

Straw-man arguments brought up again and again.

Spewed from hypocritical oath keepers.

Diverting their kids life and saying we are to blame.

With them calling us horrible names and disgusting creatures.

Roll out the politicians for vigils of the fallen.

Making sure they bring out a camera crew.

What they say feels hollow and rotten.

Repeating the lines they forever spew

Police forces vying for the purple heart.

To smudge the numbers of care.

Not helping what’s being torn apart.

With noses of their fascist flare.

Marching with their semi-hard steel.

Making everyone around feel unsafe.

The presence of guns doesn’t bring appeal.

Feeling we could be a target if we misbehave.

With a stomping figure shadowing over the crowd.

Instilling a feeling of fear.

Hoping that we are happy and proud.

As they hold the path of death so near

Section 28 has never left us.

It has a different disguise.

Where it drips with hateful pus.

With media and governments fighting for our demise

A forgotten flow in the littered streets.

Gone in the favour of the steps.

Words shattered in the place where lips meet.

Of what has been fought for and the lost that have been swept.

The reason has swam away.

Feet march evermore on the path.

Not to be spoken on another day.

With false misplaced corporate wrath.

It gets worse each year with change put to the side.

Protests get less in the ticks of time.

Names worn on the obelisk of all that have died.

But patience is thin resembling actions of a mime

Light shines through in the lies of monetary gains.

But all that remains are the tears.

Where eyes of the guilty are sheltered from being stained.

It carries on in supplemental fears.

Freedom isn’t giving us a quarter.

Where our existence is pushed to the side.

We want to walk where we won’t be slaughtered.

Or attacked with disgusted words and eyes.

Hate continues to feed on the divine.

But we won’t stop to rest.

Our voices will forever echo and shine.

That Pride is still a protest

Not down for the Count

Do you hear us baaing like goats?

Shouting against restrictions passed by double seamed turncoats.

Where blame is given, hiding their blatant faults.

But all is shown are their fully stocked bigoted vaults

With empty words stacking in favour of other groups.

Hearing their hypocritical oath rally against my community troop.

Actions consistently show us who they are.

Way past the point of going too far

Voting to take away our rights.

Not seeing we’re fucking pissed, and ready to fight.

Lies spill out their mouths, like shit from a pipe.

I’m surprised people still gobble down their empty tripe

With a baseball bat hitting ever more over our head.

Hoping we fuck off, or better still, wind up dead.

Repeating ever more the times that have passed.

Where tasks are looped and lies amassed

Using spilled blood, to virtue signal out of trouble.

All we see is a leaking bath, filled with dirty bubbles.

As water flows faster, soaking blood stained ground.

Bodies stack higher, creating a fly riddled mound

Shout out loud, especially when hard to do.

Keep being that beacon of change, and always be true.

Don’t bend over and alter your words.

Where people urge you to suck down their turds

Never be the sheep that follows the script.

Not questioning where life is going, and what has been ripped.

Be the voice that inspires, get your blood boiling.

Where words have others moving from static toiling

Keep spewing the truths of what life should be.

Show others of what you can see.

Life is too special, we need to defend.

Don’t sit still too long, or it will never mend

Truths are better and ones hard to swallow.

If we can’t have that, life will continue to wallow.

Stand up against the waves crashing in.

We need to carry our faults, and also our sins

The flow of time is changed by our screaming voice.

Always at moments where we have no other choice.

We have to keep going, and not slow down.

Or we will be kept looking like the weeping clown

We outnumber their noses thirty to one.

But they seem to think how our lives should be won.

We’re tired of their pompous fuckery sound.

Barking like a untrained rabid hound

Spilled ink litters our lives for the worst.

Emotions riding high, and ready to burst.

Words bent in favour of their golden path.

Vision darting side to side, confused by the maths

Eyes bleeding from the changing disguise.

We see the movements, and have always been wise.

The class has long ended, and the results are in.

We need to change the curriculum, and throw their asses in the bin.

About the author

Loren Lepton (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist (music/code/art/writing), focusing on freedom of expression in the face of adversity. Writer in poetry of self reflection, politics, life & death. Not shying away from discomfort, but in favour of experiencing to understand & overcome it. "If I can make people feel uncomfortable & question their surroundings, that feels like a win."

IG: @lorenlepton

"I don't consider myself of any gender, I just exist to be a person doing their thing. It's felt like that since I was very young, even before shifting focus in first transitioning when in my mid-late teens, which had stopped & started many times for various reasons. I'm a person that does what they want & lives how they feel they should live without restrictions put in place. If that turns heads, then I hope their neck breaks from staring too long.

I feel you should just do what you want without question, that could be from a job you want to do, to how you want to be. But make sure you're doing it for you & not for your friends or people around you. I keep myself to myself for the most part, including my philosophy (Satanism) as well as my sexuality or gender, since that has nothing to do with anyone else. I never came out to my folks until I reached my mid-30s, because it doesn't have anything to do with them. Plus also as well for safety. But I feel when you share things like that, people have an assumption that you are X person or Y person, so I don't give out a lot of myself in case assumptions are passed. I'd rather live a life that's not filled with questions.

I save a lot of things for when a discussion comes up or if I find a personal experience funny to talk about, even if they find it horrifying. I think laughing at past experiences in your life is a great way to get past them, because in the end, only you can get past yourself, not someone padding your ego."

They recently released an album with their band Ereurs, @eruersband on Instagram!  You can listen to their music on bandcamp.

"My current music project is ERUERS, a political & personal charged endeavour. Looking at a sense of self in a world where that is somehow not allowed to exist. With a sound that can be best described as an auricular onslaught. Looking at how our governments & how many others treat people not like them, whether being skin colour, sex or whatever. The band is not on certain streaming platforms due to political reasons, it cuts away a huge chunk of not only money but also eyes seeing our material, but it's for good reason & hopefully others join in that, rather than looking past the problems for pennies in return. Artists are worth more, but the public are very unwilling to support even if they do "love" them."

check out their latest release - Cellar Door