Asylum

[DanaC]

[As usual, having been messing about with a poem, I decided to post the first draft here Comments, criticisms and suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks.]


Asylum

Come on in, take a seat and don’t make a sound. We’ll give the help you need, to return to where you’ll bleed on someone else’s ground. Is that a child at your skirt, with her eyes blazing hurt? Well that will never do. Theres a doorway over there, it’s wet and stormy and you're scared, but it’s the best that we can do.

Did you think that we would care? Did you think we’d lay it bare? For a sufferer like you? Tell your story in your sleep, there are rules we need to keep, we have our own problems too. We can hurt you if we want, we can hold you to account, for the way that you arrived and the troubles you can count.

Tell me again, what they did to your men, when they stormed through the night. We’ll file it and say you’re a liar and anyway, you left it too late. Did your son survive? Is your sister alive? Prove your pain to us now, are those tears in your eyes? Now tell us again, how many of them, did not survive?

Can you show us some scars? Can you prove who you are? Did you think we would take it on faith? You’re thin as a whip, you look dead and you sit like a long forgotten wraith. And your eyes hold the colour of all that you lost, your shoulders weighed with the unbearable cost, of how you got away.

We’ve reached our conclusion. Your scars aren’t enough, we’re sending you home, your story’s a bluff. The rapes never happened, the death toll’s a lie, no one was tortured, nobody died. You never were married, your son never lived, your sister’s made up and the names that you give don’t exist.

It’s five in the morning. The runway is cold. Your little girl’s crying, from eyes that look old. The men who brought you, were rough and unkind, they bruised you and dragged you and paid no mind to the tears of your just-wakened child. You wipe her eyes now, pull her red rain-coat tight and tell her, you’ll make it all right.

[DanaC]

I've made a couple of minor alterations. The most impactful one being the change from "thin rain-coat" to "red rain-coat" in the last verse. The rationale for this change was to make it less a 'symbolic' image and more of a phsyical description of the child.

I'd showed the poem to a friend and whilst he liked most of it, he felt 'emotionally manipulated' by some of it. He equated it with the incidental music you get in a tearjerker movie. I think the change of wording in that last line makes quite a big difference to this effect. The middle verses he felt were very strong and that sits with my own reading of it.

I'm still not happy with the first and last verse, but I'll keep working on it.

[footfootfoot]

I really cannot read this poem.
sorry.

[DanaC]

In what way can you not read it?

[footfootfoot]

In the way that it is too upsetting. Sort of like running my emotional knuckles across a cheese grater.

[DanaC]

OKay, maybe this one needs some background explanation:

In the UK, Asylum seekers are interviewed over and over again by people whose fall back position is to disbelieve. I have many friends amongst the refugee communities and know of many cases where immigration officials have denied the voracity of their claims despite massive medical evidence to the contrary.

For example, one woman who lost all three of her children and was raped many times along with her sister and mother, was refused asylum and told that she was lying and had never borne children. She had medical evidence to prove that she'd borne children and that she had internal scarring from the rape and torture.

Another man, an ex soldier, had been arrested and tortured over a period of two years. His injuries were horrific, the scarring extensive. At his medical examination (immigration doctor) he showed some of h is scars, when he tried to show the rest, he was told "no, there's no need, we've seen enough".

His case was then refused on the grounds of a lack of medical evidence.

One young mum, a freind of my mum's from the refugee council, an asylum seeker from one of the African countries was deported a few months ago. The officers arrived at her house at 4.30 am and dragged her and her five year old child out of the house. They had no time to pack, they had the clothes on their backs. Had the young woman not been carrying a mobile phone to call a freind and tell them what was happening,\ none of us would have known. She'd have just vanished. They'd been in the country for nearly two and a half years. Her case also had been refused on the grounds that her case was not provable, despite medical evidence of torture and rape.

Another friend and his family had come over from Pakistan. They are Amaddiya, a form of Islam, considered by other branches to be unislamic and therefore subject to persecution. The leader of their sect lives in London because it's not safe for him in his homeland. My friend's brother was automatically given leave to stay because of being Amaddiya.....When my friend Imran was interviewed, the officer said "There's no such sect as Amaddi".

[DanaC]

Ah I see. I thought maybe the message wasn't clear. Wasn't sure bhow much you know about asylum seekers in the UK My apologies

[footfootfoot]

Actually, I didn't know anything about the asylum seekers, so thanks, I guess.

It is brutal and horrible and inexplicable.

I'm still not gonna read that poem though.

[DanaC]

*laughs* that's fair enough 3foot I'm not offended.

[footfootfoot]

OK Dana, not that I've actually *read* your poem, but it calls to mind this one:

Please Call Me by My True Name

by Thich Nhat Hahn


Do not say that I will depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch
to be a tiny bird, with wings still so fragile
learning to sing in my new nest
to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower
to be a jewel hiding itself in stone

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labour camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

[DanaC]

Wow. That's an amazing poem.

[footfootfoot]

Yes, it is.

[The 42]

Beautiful- both of them.

And what's wrong with feeling "emotionally manipulated"? Isn't that what poetry is for? To share an experience in it's entirety, emotions and all? It's beautiful, and if the guy who said that felt that way, he shouldn't be reading poetry at all.

[DanaC]

*smiles* thanks 42. I appreciate that. I think the friend of mine who said that has a particular taste in poetry. He likes the kind of poetry that puts it out there and leaves you to reach your own conclusions emotionally.

I am very glad you liked it.

[lumberpoet]

like the meter.

what song was in your head?

reminds me of pink floyd

did you exchange a walk on part in the war for the lead role in a cage?