Attached by voluntary (so they say) chains
To the desk provided to me
In this open plan office


Compromised from birth
Wage slave
Unable to speak up
For fear of master’s minions
Taking the food out of my children’s mouths


They call me fragile


There are those that do their jobs
Because they can 
(not because they must)
Smiling as they say things about 
Me that are not remotely true
As I am cornered in the re-education
Session of the HR seminar
And I take it with a well-disciplined
Shit-eating grin…


Yet, They call me fragile


On social meeja
I see some members of a certain tribe
Wishing to eradicate me and mine
‘Dear fellow whites…It’s only a joke…well kinda…
get over it’


Yet, They call me FRAGILE


I see the tribute on the 
Company’s web site
To Black Lives Matter
And the concern for ‘BAME’ colleagues
Through these ‘challenging times’


Yet, They call ME fragile


As the future baristas 
In sociology and journalism departments
Deconstruct my life, my history, and my culture with
A singular sociopathic misandry


Yet, THEY call me fragile


They demand to see my face
And know my real name
On the social meeja
When I show the slightest resistance
To this, the greatest control system
Ever devised
‘I’m sure your employer would love to know your 
Real feelings about this, wouldn’t they?’
Being the catch-all retort
When neither their rhetoric nor dialectic 
Has lived up to its supposed
inherent superiority
And we do not respond in kind


Yet, they call me fragile


They have declared war on me and mine
Just for existing
Heaping calumny upon calumny
And accuse me of holding the deepest hate
For the Other
Attacking us in 
Weakly justified pre-emptive attacks
And I and mine
Have not responded in kind


Yet, They call me fragile


They attack our women
Calling them Karen
For expecting the same treatment
They would give to others
They threaten them 
Then video - 
Only registering the fear
Of cancellation and the ultimate white curse of ostracism
And we have not yet responded in kind


Yet, They call me fragile

But one day we will respond in kind
And it won't be because we are fragile