Hello Everybody,
I like Alan Rayner's ideas about democracy. I imagined you might like the
immediate raceyness that the writing below seems to bring to my first,
second and third person encounters with democracy as a diasporic Briton:
Three Black Males (or in respect to Alan's poem - Three Black Moles in a
W/Hole of Whiteness)
Three black males get arrested
When they said they seek two whites
Dis poet sais that's expected
For we have no humna rights,
We die in their police stations
We do nothing to get caught
We are only in white nations
When we win them gold in sports
Three balck males in the system
So the sytem just rolls on.
Can you recognise the victims
When the truth is dead and gone,
Can you recognise their anguish
When they beg you time to care
Or do you forget your language
When three black males disappear?
Raphael Rowe is not an angel
And Michael Davis ain't
Let us be straight and factual
Randolph Johnson is no saint,
The Home Office has a God complex
But that office is not great
for it does not recognise subtext
Injustice or mistakes.
Let all poets now bear witness
Let the satroyteller tell
Let us deal with dis white business
Dis democracy's not well,
The cops, the judgem and jury
Need some helping it does seem
And three balck males with a story
Fight
So truth can reign supreme.
Benjamin Zephaniah, 2001, Too Black, Too Strong, Tarset, Northumberland:
Bloodaxe Books,
87 pages of wonderful writing and poetry for just £2.50
Yaqub
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