no walls can divide us

no walls can divide us.

we are all inextricably linked, our humanity a shared thread, our oneness flowing through our veins, our red blood reminding us that we are of the same family – the human family.

we have endured much, we have spilt each others blood, we have gone to war, we have meted out unspeakable horrors upon our sisters and mothers and daughters and partners and especially upon those whose humanity we have stripped, whose lives we have taken, and whose lives we have damaged far beyond mere words.

we are complicit, all of us, when hunger stalks the gilded streets, when abuse becomes invisible, when a far too few live obscenely ostentatious lives while the far too many merely exist, when ‘my country right or wrong’ jingoism and religious fanaticism attempt to fracture us even more. 

but there is hope, or at least i hope that there will always be hope, when our shared human condition lights the spark that may one day repel the obscenities we view each day, when we stand up to our ‘leaders’ and say in one voice – ‘enough’, when colour and race and religion and caste and gender are consumed by the collective sentiments of indignation, when we all speak with one voice – ‘enough’.

enough of the killing, enough of the greed, enough of the savagery, enough of the abuse, enough of construction of walls that divide, enough of the machinery of war that propels our economies, enough of looking away, enough of turning ones back, enough of apathetic complicity, enough of our silence, enough of being led to slaughter each other, enough of the greed that leaves the many in a cycle of grinding poverty, enough of all of that and more.

enough is enough.

enough …

won’t you …?

won’t you … ?

allow me to take your hand in mine, fingers kneading, knotted, wrinkled, from teasing out too many a paltry rhyme, somewhat scarred from the scraping of passing time.

we may walk a while, distilling the essence of love, far away from this time, hand in hand, epochs away from the polythene grandstand.

we have seen so much, seen it all it sometimes feels, holding on to sanity, just barely grasping onto a filament of hope, when all seemed bleak, when life splintered and felt far too much to cope.

won’t you let me take your hand in mine, far beyond mere words, long past mouthed vows, sharing the silence of weary travellers, who may have seen so much before, and yet persist, hoping, always hoping for a kernel of substance at the core.

won’t you take my hand in yours, it’s yours to take and to hold, away from this bazaar where feelings are traded as commodities, bargained over, casually bought, and callously sold.

we shall share pristine moments, shutting out the passing parade, fleeing from the boulevards of excess, as far away from the fickle charade.

won’t you take my hand in yours, allowing me to take yours in mine, knowing the pathway may be littered with nettles, and knowing this too, that we will always have each other, when the storms pass, when the dust settles.

won’t you … ?

i am human

i am human.

you hardly spare me a glance, as you walk past me, a fellow human, whom you pretend not to see.

you send me off to fight your wars, remaining comfortably ensconced in your ivory tower, while in the trenches i shiver and cower.

you dock my pay if one of your fine bone china cups gets chipped, you withhold my wages, while the hunger in my children’s stomachs rages.

your children still call me ‘boy’ or ‘girl’, though it was i who changed their diapers long ago, but it is still i who is the recipient of the epithets that you and they hurl and throw. 

you use my body for your carnal desires, throwing some money on my stained bed, you use me as a lifeless rag, then dispose of me in a rubbish bag.

you claim to be so liberal, so open-minded and progressive, yet you ignore my plight, you discuss poverty in your chandeliered rooms, as i prepare some beans in the dim candlelight.

you send your cheques to greenpeace and amnesty, perhaps to assuage your guilt somehow, as you refuse to pay me my overtime due, your body weighed down by heaving jewellery, in red and white and blue.

you see me building your glittering skyscrapers and your glitzy malls, my hard hat pummelled by stone and dust, as i eke out a living, my dreams turned to rust.

you walk and you talk, leaving me to scrounge in the garbage heaps, for scraps of this and that, while your stocks and portfolios grow ever more fat.

i am invisible to you, to your posh and pompous kind, and i doubt your humanity will be ever anywhere to find.

you see me, a festering sore on your manicured lawns, a piece of dirt living on ‘charitable’ rations, and the first to bear the brunt of your police batons.

i am human, though only barely just, easily interred, once my purpose has been served,
i am human, though only barely just, as i get buried in a heap of dust.

am i human ?

seeds …

seeds …

swept up

by the dust

scattered remnants

of lives once whole

now

buried

interred

in cold dead dry ground.

seeds

swept up

by the dust

seeking a glimmer

of hope

of the promise

of

a better tomorrow.

seeds

swept up

by the dust

sinking roots

hoping to belong

somewhere

anywhere

fatigued

spent

waiting

hoping

for days

moments

tomorrows

a

time

a

place

where one

need not

be

ever smiling

and to be

always strong.