When the public square shrinks beneath the weight of fear and fragile power, yet rises again, phoenix-like, finding its voice, reversing the onus on the lawmakers

A Protest Longette (and the 5th ever Longette!)
by guest poet Dennis Ryle

The banners lift again where loud voices gather, unbroken, rising to the clouds.
Police lines form and harden early, drawing solid borders round the right to speak,
Ministers insist nation’s safety needs a tighter leash on unruly crowds,
Yet elders whisper histories of marches shaping crucial futures still to come.

A flare of chalk on the pavement sparks a headline calling dissent threat, without guile,
The black cameras frame the loudest signs as solid proof of chaos at the gates,
But students chant for climate, justice, truth, reform, refusing a quiet exile,
And fed-up workers walk off job sites, naming wages stolen in the grim shadows.

The laws grow thick with clauses meant to curb the unruly element — so astute!
While pundits trade in panic, turning nuance into fodder for the frenzied feed,
Yet poets carve resistance into syllables that governments can’t ever mute,
And faith groups hold their prayer vigils where sweet compassion overrules lofty decree,

The square becomes a mirror, showing who we are and will become when pressure rises,
The question echoes loudly: who decides which voices count as threat and named promise,
The nation’s pulse grows restless as the boundary of dissent swells and surprises,
And every shouted slogan tests the strength of freedoms long tested and assumed,

Still hope walks barefoot, steady, through the barricades of brittle fear, courage well laid.
For every brittle law that narrows space, a thousand hearts expand it wider,
A different future leans toward courage where the people gather unafraid,
And truth, though often cornered, trampled, stifled, muzzled, finds its way through cracks in stone,
Until the day we learn that celebrated freedom grows when shared, not seized alone.

© Dennis Ryle, February 2026