Risk patterns

It’s #NationalPoetryDay in the UK today; the theme is ‘refuge’. In different ways, shapes and forms, I’ve written a lot about that. Here’s an old poem, from my first collection Ticker-tape, that speaks to it:

1.

I’m hearing that foxes
are feeling put out
the chickens are gathering
in chicken-only meetings,
discussing how fox violence
makes them feel.

2.

We like the idea of the South.
Until it knocks on our door.

3.

Who is surprised that people
want to claim the joys of being ‘exotic’
but none of the pain of being ‘different’?

4.

The thing that really pulled me up:
half the country has fled. 50%, gone,
in less than two years.

Did all of them choose to do that?
Is it actually a choice when someone
shoves a gun in your face and says ‘go’?

5.

(To the tune of ‘Spider-Man’)

Whiter-Man! Whiter Man!
Does whatever a hegemonic culture
lets him get away with, frankly.

6.

All those brown people
quietly condoning terrorism.

So unlike all those white people,
loudly condemning racism.

Oh.

7.

You know we’re an island, right?
How do you think most people
got here first? They didn’t fall
from the trees, like some monkey-shaped
conker, or spring up fully formed
from the heather. Some sort of sea crossing
may have been involved.

8.

There’ll never be much compassion in this debate. How can there be when we’ve — ‘we’! Look how I accept it! — done a lot of invading, and rarely been invaded? Deep down, what we’re expressing is the exasperation that those chaps over there couldn’t make a better go of defending themselves against their others — unlike us.

9.

I have a recurring dream,
in which I stand on the table
at the dinner party I’m attending,
say “I’m an immigration jihadist.
Let them all in. Let’s start the
Throw Open All The Doors Party.”
I wake up, and silently chide myself
for being braver asleep than awake.

10.

I am an expat.
You are a refugee.
They are a migrant.

11.

Naming the programme Mare Nostrum.
The fucking cheek. It’s their sea too.

12.

You know the continent
is ageing rapidly? Dying in fact.
Who do you think is going to come
and look after your parents, seeing
as you don’t do extended families?

And this is the welcome you give
to the people who will be keeping
your show on the road.

13.

Refuge is not just a place.
It’s a state of mind.
A state of hope.

14.

I’ve already won the lottery.
I have a British passport.