Migrations To Life

 

     Out there I found my calling,

Loud, voluminous shining

Singing bright and wide!

 

     See the World they said,

See how the third World lives too,

For it is tougher than the

Ghetto speak of Manchester,

Rougher than the drug dens

Where the lens of an eye

Claims its prize of blood upon

Rooms filled with offerings

Of scag;

     Each needle protruding,

From deep within veins.

 

     (See ‘our’ world!

A world we neither share

Nor care for and I thought,

How beautiful it is to be happy there)!

 

     Out there,

Where gold is ransacked

For trinkets that declare

False status in The West;

A people - fine tall and proud seek

No more than what they need,

No envy upon us,

No greed for a facile

Promise of success,

     And yes,

She is blessed with all

The courage a thousand armies

Could never tame!

 

     Isiolo!

The Basin – The Frying Pan

Be an unforgiving place,

No air to swell lofted curls

No dare by Great White Hunters

To try impress their girls,

     But she,

She has riches,

     She sings bright and wide,

Her dark skin thieving

My adoration from mine own

Conditioned self – yet, that smile

I have never seen again!

 

     I am back now,

Back in blighty slightly drunk

Upon the memory of The Dark Continent,

My shekkles proving nothing more

Than beer tokens to drown truth,

     For the truth be an unforgiving

Place the fake cannot perceive;-

We are framed in The West

For chasing dreams built on dollars,

     While they smile

Contentment; wearing only

Jugs of water and baskets of weave.

 

     See The World they said,

And I don’t know which be more

The pain;

     The raping of Africa

For the greed that we are,

Or the killing for oil,

For the greed that we are!

     And my mind beset with riches

You just haven’t witnessed

Will never rest again,

Knowing the Kikuyu and Masai

Have been killed for our gain,

     And I need no lens

To tell me This World be lost;-

‘Carrying the greatest love

In my heart for the girl that smiled!’

 

Michael J Waite 21st January 2016.