And now for something different... The Boat People

Hi,

Hope you're having a good week. 

A little politics this time, an area I usually avoid. 

(though there is a Satire piece coming next week).

Today’s game, Endless parade

The refugees streamed

The community screamed

The borders degenerated

The debates raged

The numbers increased

The solution escaped

The stress escalated

The panic dominated

The resources depleted

The system collapsed

The dissent grew

And the unwilling hosts

Played catch up

In a one sided game

With burden as victor

And suffering as the result.

The debate became tired

Interest waned

Media moved on

Allowing a myriad of ‘activities’

To reign unchecked.

Nothing so insignificant

As a tired story.

From 2015. No doubt around the refugees issue, which was world wide at the time.
What was I referring to specifically? That's the glory of poetry. You decide.


More Poetry

The Ultimate Loner

commits the Ultimate Act.

'The Great American Novel, set in Australia' (review 2021)

Amazon with ebook

A refugee poem - Love in the camps

The Marooned Mirage 

(aka Refugee Fantasy)

  

I first saw you

Branded by the unyielding light

Out of the haze and dust

Amidst the brittle remnants of pasts dispersed.

The camp is suffocating in its size

Intimidating by its nature

Swollen to the horizon

And yet still inadequate.

We are as worthless as the shattered concrete

We left behind

Like the rest of the crumbling unwanted souls

Yet I am despised more by my own

For being today’s arrival

Tomorrow it will be my turn to condemn.

A hierarchy dominates

A once valued loyalty is for the fool

A neighbour is merely your closest enemy

Yet we all dwell beneath the rounded ceiling

That is torment

Keeping us in

Caged without walls.

You were waiting behind me

Deeper in the gangling line

A mere spot on a centipede

With your battered water container

Precious, yet unable to serve its purpose

A symbol of your dire trials.

I could ill afford a diversion

My mouth crisp

With the frenzy for relief

The offspring of depletion.

The wailing of the children

No longer tears at my heart

They merely present iniquitous competition

The need of the self

Renders exotic concerns void

An impossible luxury.

Despite the lingering decay

And the whispers of oblivion

Somehow

You intimated to me

Without a word

In the only language

That makes any sense

In this prevailing chaotic mirage

An illusion too inhuman to be palpable.

But as time turns against us

And what’s left of my family awaits my return

The cold descends again

Merciless

To remind us that she is Master

Malevolent but almighty

And we are forced to respect her rules

More honest than those of men.

I cannot surrender my station

In this sluggish bedraggled worm

As there are affairs

More valuable than attraction

And though I turn to the front

And hope to find you again

Amid the bursting muster

I wonder if I will have the capacity

To do a thing about it.

(An alternate version of this poem first appeared in the collection, Caged Without Walls). 

https://www.anthonyjlangfordbooks.com/books