Dear Salman
Considering what you've said - "the clash of my cultures..." your poem 'Paki
in the Middle' - is ground breaking. Goodness, you're very young but I see
you and your writing leaping. We older ones - me - need to follow your
leaps. A couple of nights ago I saw a guy, Luke Wright, near your age,
perform some brilliant things - entirely all inside out. His poems were a
bit stereo-rap-slam but not - breaking from that sterotype. His poems are
not political in the way that yours are but both you and he share the
brilliance of "I do this." Too many of us oldies (I'm talking about myself)
do talking about doing. We need to be doing too.
Luke's poems, gun in cheek, included such wonderful titles as "Fight For
Your Right to Latte," "Super Hero - Urban Slightly Awkward Man" and "Hang
Your Friends." "Hang Your Friends" is an amazing number/rap - hang your
friends for they are forever going on about war in Iraq, social injustice,
global warming and the like - and in hanging them, peace.
Keep going strong, Rupert
A lot of my poetry has been very political, very angry, very emotional.
But I've often tended to write about issues from which I am detatched,
issues that I care very deeply about, but ones that I have no direct
involvement with. This one is a personal poem, something much closer to
me. It came about following a conversation I had with a friend of mine
who, like me, is half-Pakistani. She's been living in Dubai, and she too
feels the clash of cultures, pulling her in two directions, and not
wanting to go either way. This is the clash of my cultures...
- Paki in the Middle -
I watch as Boeing meets building, twin towers reduced to rubble,
And see the hatred in their hearts, they call me to Jihad;
"Allah calls upon you, Child of the East,
Come shed the blood of Infidels, our martyr, semtex-clad!'
I see a nation ripped asunder, the Arab people blown apart,
By the bombs of truth and justice, freedom's flag unfurled;
"Liberty calls upon you, Child of the West,
Come kill for democracy, let oil drown the world!"
And while both sides hold their heroes, their honoured fallen dead,
I play piggy in the middle, as the bombs fly overhead.
Upon what battlefield can it be, that civilisations clash?
Not Washington or Falluja, nor New York or Baghdad;
But the blood within my body, there a war is fought,
Come East, come West, my heart hangs heavy, for a world turned mad.
And I shout from the highest rooftops, to the streets of London town,
For with their bitter hatreds, both sides have it wrong;
But when they will not listen, to a call for peace and change,
What for the blood within me, where do I belong?
Now nothing is black, nothing is white, all runs, it seems, to red,
While I play piggy in the middle, as the bombs fly overhead,
Just a Paki in the middle, as my people's blood is shed.
- Salman Shaheen
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