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Kneecap Hill

Frank on Kneecap Hill, Mo Chara Court case.


In the shadow of Belmarsh 

where political prisoners breathe through concrete

IRA veterans counting decades in their cells,

Julian Assange's ghost still bleeding through the walls,

they chose this courthouse like a surgeon chooses scalpels,

psychological theatre staged where dissent goes to die.

 

This was never about flags.

This was about the children—always the children

their small hands reaching through rubble

that our taxes bought,

whilst Starmer's fountain pen

signs death certificates

in diplomatic blue.

 

They moved court dates like chess pieces,

chose Belmarsh's shadow for maximum intimidation,

but empires make the same mistake:

they think fear travels in straight lines.

Coffee steam rising from paper cups like prayers,

voices weaving Gaeilge through Arabic,

Kneecap Hill called to us

not just any hill, but this hill,

 

London clay soft with centuries of rain

and the bones of the conquered.

I gripped the tricolour's wooden spine,

felt my great grandmother's hands inside mine,

felt every famine, every clearance,

every stolen acre pulsing through the pole

as we climbed towards the courthouse windows

that reflected nothing but our own faces.

 

The earth gave way like a confession

London clay opening to receive

A green, white, orange declaration,

and when the fabric snapped taut

in Thames wind,

it sounded like a bone breaking,

like a chain snapping,

like the first word

of a language

they thought they'd killed.

 

Police radios crackled panic:

"Subjects have... planted... requesting guidance on..."

Whilst we stood on Kneecap Hill

born in one defiant thrust,

named in the moment of its making,

sovereign for as long as we could hold it.

 

An elderly Palestinian woman

climbed our liberated slope,

touched the Irish flag with fingers

that remembered olive groves,

whispered "Ahlan wa sahlan"

welcome home

in a voice that made the Thames

sound like the Jordan,

made London clay feel like Hebron stone.

 

A Belfast activist learnt to say

"Min al-nahr ila al-bahr"

whilst Mo Chara's freedom

hung on legal technicalities

and Starmer's political computation

how many Palestinian children

equal one British arms contract?

 

The courthouse windows became mirrors,

our colours blazing back

at the building where they cage

anyone who dares to count the dead out loud.

Victory came like lightning splitting bone

time limits failed their prosecution,

but sweeter still:

every attempt to silence Palestine

through Irish throats

multiplies into movements

Starmer cannot calculate,

cannot contain, cannot control.

 

We march through London's arteries,

Palestinian flags snapping like synapses,

accidentally united by their own violence,

the taste of tear gas and hope

mixing on our tongues,

whilst behind us Kneecap Hill

holds our tricolour against the sky

proof that some ground,

once claimed,

becomes the seed

of every future uprising,

the coordinates

for revolutions

not yet born.

 

This is not beginning.

This is continuation

the same song our grandmothers sang

in different keys,

the same flag our children will plant

in different soil,

whilst Starmer's fountain pen

runs dry

and his miscalculations

bloom into the very future

he was never taught

to fear.

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