Tag: refugees

Fear in the waves.

Shivering, shuddering beneath the leaden skies

soaking them, water running everywhere and lies,

all finding its way under their skin.

—

Pushed, unauthorised but terrified into obeisance,

obedience to the traffickers as the lights flicker

and waves roar over hard rocks.

—

Huddled, terrified they hold onto the frail touches

of each other and a craft barely above the seething

waters of a writhing sea.

—

There’s a guiding hand on the halting, struggling tiller,

and fear climbs and falls with the North Seas power,

and chugging ships churning wake.

—

A shout, Land! 

and sand and shores and folk with fluffy  blankets,

breaking the law set by a brutal minister.

—

Warmed, dried, dinking clean water, eating cold food,

huddling, terrified as they are found to be wanting

and treated like criminals.

—

‘We’ve come from Afghanistan where we worked for you.”

“We’ve run from a regime and my British Aunt is near.”

“Don’t send me away. I am only a child.”

—

Shivering, shuddering beneath the glowering gazes,

Huddled, terrified of where they will be going, They

only asked for mercy.

—

Still, the powers want them gone, still the people

are taught refugees are wrong, a transgression 

of oppression

and victims are made victims again.

The Poor paying for the Rich

He looked into his wallet and then into the face of his children.

Oliver looked out from their faces, thinned and paled by hunger,

Their sad eyes looked at  under woolly hats and coat covered arm hugs.

—

His eyes watered and his empty belly grumbled as he opened

the last dull can of beans, cut the crust of curling bread into two,

watched the food disappear into hungry mouths opened like nesting chicks.

Not far away, plates were full with succulent salmon, rare steak, 

beef, chicken  vegetables, fried potatoes and mashed spuds, followed

by golden custard, french named cakes, apple pies and salted chocolate ices.

—-

Somewhere a mother scraped small crumbs from her sons bowl, sucking

them from the poor plastic spoon. In her head imagining the eggs tomorrow,

when the reduced Universal credit arrived, a meal, heat, then rancid bin search.

Not far away, a kitchen door ajar, while out of date food is thrown away,

in the waste; while far away, the icy hearted are having a party at number 10,

half eaten rich food slipped in a bin. They take from the poor to give to the rich.

—-

Clean, loved children crying themselves to sleep, hunger gnawing at their vitals,

holding onto the hope for tomorrow they’d be in heaven, food galore at the FoodBank,

bringing home food in plenty to be eked slowly to cover the schoolless, foodless weeks.

Miles away lives a callous rich man who can choose to give them enough or kill

them slowly by starvation and a rich woman minister who chooses to treat them as 

alien pariahs, ignores the council of the wise, ignores deadly hunger, abuse and trafficking.

—–

Truth may come, but already the lies hold sway, the government culled the media.

So, how will the hungry children have their voices heard? The starving, the weakened

the oppressed, hidden from sight, are crying out, lost in the lies trumpeted out by Tory press.

======

Yes, minister, the numbers in poverty are atrocious 

but we are doing what we can, watch us.

We’ve paid the rich and they are wealthy too. 

Tis tricky, the trickle down effect?

‘It won’t.’ A lie from long ago. 

The poor are always with us – but they

don’t

donate

to

our

party.

My Country’s Shame

The shame falls on me like showers of hail,

it drums on my burdened head. And I want

it to help me shed my skin and bury me but-

Would I be a whitened sepulchre? Faceless

with my nation’s baseless and graceless way

of torturing small children by turning them

back, rejecting their cries because we are

unwilling to open our arms and welcome

their haunted hurts and necessary needs.

——-

Still, she sits on her petty, priti throne

dishing out her orders that embarrass us,

to keep her figures tidy,  while in Europe

the sprawling camps of hungry evacuees

are greeted, warmed, fed by Europeans

not us. The guilt she should be feeling is

pushed into piles of likewise, party papers,

`and the British standard pretends to change 

but the shameful truth will ever distress me.

The Refugee’s Journey in Darkness

—

The darkness overwhelmed her and within its womb

her hurts were hidden and her tears could fall like rain

and the storm of running, hiding, and protecting her

children was for a moment abating and creating a place,

a space for rest and respite, hugs and holding tight.

The smell of burned homes and grenades bursting

still soaked their clothes and strong in her nostrils.

Sights and sounds that will stir their vivid dreams.

——-

The guns were distant and the drones silent in the star

lighted sky, exhausted her eyes closed and the drag

of sleep overcame her but a rustle in the bushes and

she was awake, alert and her anxiety rose as she lay.

No other sound and so she let her heavy eyes droop

and her head rest on the emaciated bone hardness of 

her daughter, and woke as the light began to show

bringing colour to the shrubs and trees around them.

—–

Slowly they arose and she gave them water, bread 

and the strength to walk on through the thickening

trees. Pausing here, and there to watch and hear if

death drones followed. And so they crept on silently.

In the susurrous rustling of leaves they saw the hut.

A man took her cash, watch, phone and promised

a safe journey. The hungry, wasting children were

quiet on the boat and hastened to travel as advised.

——

They had not eaten, nor had clean water and yet

hopefully setting off they joyfully arrived at the

shore of the English Channel.  The boat was thin

and crowded but sailing towards her mother and

there were her cousins too, gave her good spirits.

Cold, Hungry after travelling  a thousand miles

they arrive. Firmly they are shushed and ushered,

into locked rooms, questioned, cruelly separated.

——-

The children dragged away from her screaming.

She’s interrogated with her heart breaking. ‘I’m

back fighting for my life,  my girls, my son,’

she thought. No welcome, no warmth, only 

questions and coldness.  As the darkness of tory

party prejudice destroyed her hopes it seemed

to her that the killer, diving drones 

would have been 

kinder.

A Refugee Hell

She shrank from the man, who wanted to enslave her body,

and over months with her children she walked, crawled 

and found a 

place to sleep. work for few coins, hiding and

hoping that they would not chase her and place her 

again in chains. 

—

A man took pity, her money and her mother’s jewellery

and placed her in a group to travel across the wide

wilderness. She ate scraps and sold her body so that

she could keep travelling away from terror and try to

find a way through to feed her cheerless children. 

—

It took more than a year before she was pushed onto

a frail boat that was thrust into the seething waters of

a strange sea and holding her children, enduring the

cold and violence of the waves they arrived on a 

strange and sandy shore. Lights sparkled dimly in 

a far off way and together they walked through the

strong salty grasses.

——

Someone came and took her

and thrust her into a van and gruff voices warned

her in a language of violence and further threats.

——-

Mute and the children grizzling they held tightly to

one another, and once the van stopped, they were

talked through a security gate into a building full

of destitute, desperate people from lands far away.

———

She shrank back with her children and knew that

hell was here. They told her through an interpreter

that she would be returned, and discovered to

her shock that she was hated by this government,

and that Great Britain was cruel, compassionless 

and as threatening as those,

through which she had hard travelled.

Corruption and Greed

Bombast and rhetoric that lines the domain,

blasting through democracy and destroying,

bruising the nerves and breaking the news, 

to split and divide neighbours so they can

cruelly conquer the looking lost, the pain

filled poor, the long time oppressed, and 

dignity dies from preventable diseases

while they warmonger to warp their

furtherance. And the fragile minds of

=====================

children are mutilated by ill timed

mumblings that deaden the brain to

hasty honour, love and self-worth

tidily sorted away as something bad,

while the  nasty peddling of putrid 

policies work in the veins of a populace,

to dislocate and deaden until the dead

===================

arise and triumph over the sad sickness

of oppression, organised hatred, and

so a new happence, a hope, like the

halfling trudging through Gondor with

the weight of the world in a wicked ring, 

persevered, while evil conquered itself and 

good overcame. 

The Refugee

He looked at his children and sighed,

his labouring wife by his side,

her panting and groaning rent the air

with pain, coupled with despair.

==============

He felt the tears slide down his face,

prayed for a moment of grace,

and knelt to deliver his very own chile,

in a cruel world, beyond vile.

===========

Holding his own bloody, broken mess,

his wife sobbing in her distress,

the wind cut through their tiny tent,

rain soaking, the bloodied bent

================

man, enslaved to the hatred of the lost,

and he alone counts the cost,

nowhere to go, no-one to offer a home,

they’ll die as his son in the womb. 

================

Tomorrow they’ll move, wander more,

trying to cross oceans roar,

seeking only a safe haven for his kin,

dreaming of health to work again.

=====================

A thousand miles and hundreds to go,

the press helping others say, “No!”

“You cannot stay here, you don’t belong.”

All that’s left is his death song.   

===============

He prayed the Lord to end the torment,

of seeing starving children – meant

for living, not dying to the wealthy west,

for God’s grace to do his best.

=================

While others sit in their homes at ease,

and post hate where they please,

he shares a crust and then hunts for more,

and greed replaces hope with law.