Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: migrants

  • Same Damn Bus

    I sat in the back of the bus

    because that’s where the broken kids sat.

    Not the cool ones—

    the twitchers, the burnouts,

    the ones who already knew by third grade

    this world was a bad fucking joke.

    Left side, right side?

    Jesus.

    That was for the believers.

    The ones still dumb enough to think

    which seat you chose

    meant a damn thing when the brakes were cut.

    Now we’re adults—

    barely—

    dressed up in grown-up costumes

    shouting bumper-sticker manifestos

    with all the conviction of a child

    reading a cereal box.

    You think your side matters?

    You’re still on the bus.

    Still headed straight for the edge.

    It’s just that now—

    you paid for the ride

    with your spine.

    I saw a sign the other day:

    Gays for Gaza.

    And I thought—

    Holy shit,

    we’ve lost the script.

    In Gaza they’d hang you by your ankles

    and call it justice.

    But sure, wave the flag.

    March in circles.

    It’s not about truth—

    it’s about being seen.

    I feel like I’ve been dropped into a Kafka play

    rewritten by TikTok influencers

    with terrible ring lights—

    everyone stuck in a loop,

    lip-syncing their own execution.

    That’s what they want, isn’t it?

    To be seen.

    Heard.

    Felt.

    Fucked.

    Validated by anyone, anything—

    even if it means

    joining a parade

    led by ghosts.

    They want to belong

    so bad

    they’ll build homes in their own execution chambers

    and call it progress.

    Left side, right side—

    there’s no steering wheel.

    The driver’s a ghost.

    The road’s on fire.

    And the rest of us?

    We’re just passengers

    pretending our seat matters

    while the bus barrels toward the abyss.

    And when the smoke clears—

    if it ever does—

    they’ll find bones in rows

    like teeth in a grin,

    still arguing

    over who had the better view

    as the whole goddamn thing

    went down.

  • How to Kill a Country Without Firing a Single Shot (Ode to Ireland)

    It starts not with war drums, but with whispers.

    Not a boot on the shore, but a soft-soled shuffle in the dark.

    No flags, no trumpets.

    Paperwork and policy, and a nod from some pinstriped man who’s never touched mud.

    Ireland—the old girl—she finally crawled out from the ditch they drowned her in,

    scrubbed the famine from her face,

    stitched the flag back together with borrowed thread and native blood.

    She was never perfect, no.

    But she was herself.

    And that’s a rare enough thing these days.

    Now she stands blinking in the fluorescent light of world order—surrounded.

    New rules, gods, and ghosts.

    Her voice is still hoarse from centuries of screaming in silence,

    and before she can clear her throat—someone’s already speaking for her.

    They come with stories.

    While hers are being shelved,

    dusted over by diversity slogans

    and the sound of virtue blinking red.

    And the irony is so fucking rich.

    The United Kingdom, that battered old whore of conquest,

    finally getting bent over by history.

    The colonizer colonized by complacency,

    by the very hunger it once fed across continents.

    It’s a punchline soaked in gin,

    a banquet where the menu’s in twenty languages

    but none of them say “English.”

    But Ireland?

    Ireland never got her empire.

    She got survival.

    She got famine, and flight, and diaspora.

    She got to be the drunk uncle.

    The lucky charm.

    The sob story in Boston bars.

    And just when the scars started to heal—

    when the songs came back, rising from the foggy dew,

    not as mourning but emerald celebration—

    Then, an untitled wave. 

    Not men with muskets this time.

    Not redcoats or landlords.

    Just silence.

    Just slow, unrelenting erasure dressed as virtue.

    And they say:

    “This is progress.”

    “This is compassion.”

    “This is the future.”

    But the future doesn’t speak Gaelic.

    The future doesn’t remember the graves under the hedgerows.

    The future doesn’t give a damn about your grandfather’s boots.

    This isn’t about skin.

    This isn’t about race.

    This is about place—

    and what happens when place gets diluted

    until it tastes like nothing.

    Give her just a few bloody fucking years to breathe.

    To walk her own streets

    without feeling like a stranger in the house her fathers built

    with song and sorrow.

    They call it xenophobic.

    As if love for your land is a crime.

    As if the only history worth keeping is someone else’s.

    This isn’t war.

    No bombs.

    No battles.

    No blood.

    Just replacement.

    And that’s the real trick of it—

    Not a single shot fired.

    The quietest conquest is the one where no one even notices it happening until the flags are different, and the pubs are gone, and your children don’t know the name of the river that runs behind the house where your mother was born.

  • Silence is the killer when you look the other way. (How virtuous)

    the newsreaders smirk behind the desk,

    their teeth polished white,

    their words unpolished and dull.

    the world’s on fire,

    but no one wants to say where the match came from.

    they shuffle papers,

    nod solemnly at the camera,

    and move on.

    next story.

    young girls with broken eyes walk streets that don’t care for them,

    their stories—

    torn, gutted, and stitched with silence.

    a thousand screams swallowed by a fear

    greater than justice,

    greater than truth—

    the fear of being called a name.

    racist. islamophobe.

    Or phrases like Resident Alien.

    they weigh heavier than the suffering of the small,

    the forgotten,

    the torn apart.

    the rapists walk free because the culture has grown soft,

    too soft to call evil by its name.

    and isn’t that convenient?

    for them, I mean.

    they know the game.

    play your cards right—

    and the good people will look the other way.

    good people.

    they don’t want to seem bad,

    don’t want to upset the order,

    don’t want to be labeled.

    better to let the girl bleed in a corner

    than risk being impolite.

    virtue signaling is the new religion.

    you wave the right flag,

    tweet the right slogan,

    kneel at the right altar—

    and you’re forgiven.

    it doesn’t matter what’s behind it:

    indifference,

    ignorance,

    or worse.

    the mask is enough.

    but what about the girls?

    the ones they pretend to care about?

    their bodies are battlegrounds

    for a war no one wants to admit is happening.

    the press won’t write it,

    the cops won’t fight it,

    and the priests of tolerance preach

    their sermons of silence.

    it’s a goddamn joke.

    we scream about progress,

    about justice,

    but only in the ways that won’t cost us anything.

    and the victims pile up in the shadows.

    this world isn’t just ass-backwards—

    it’s in full throttle reverse

    marching proudly backwards into oblivion

    while the banners of virtue flap overhead.

    but you can’t eat banners.

    you can’t heal wounds with hashtags.

    and you sure as hell can’t hide the blood forever.

    eventually,

    the truth crawls out of the dark.

    it always does.

    the question is:

    will anyone be left to give a damn when it does?

    (Remember when the U.K stood for something?)