I wrote this poem inspired from ‘Clocking In’ by poet Mitchell Taylor, in which he talks about the mundanity (yes, I made this word up) of retail.
Mom would drop me at The Cobbles
yes, The Cobbles, I went to a private school
a place of high fees and English smiles
and by English smiles I mean colonial rules
I’d be dropped off at The Cobbles each day
these parents scoffed at £10-notes with enthusiasm
as my parents worked their asses off so I had the best
these children had no nouse
of what it was like to be hungry to go without
what happens without their silver-platter path
rugby matches, horses, weekends in New York
lives of decadence and class
but displays of decadence didn’t stay in class
I was dropped off at The Cobbles each day
a full stop against a white background
just sheepishly reciting those Latinate sounds
I was dropped off at The Cobbles each day
even at ten I knew I was a joke
they were staring at me cus I was brown
they were all clones of each other
I’d now call them happy robots, drones
and those five years gave me depression
taught me how to be toxically selfish, alone
but that chapter of my life’s
been swallowed up in the Cold War I fought
but I’m happier now
I don’t go to private school anymore.
I was vegetarian until I was sixteen years old and this is about that. It’s also inspired by ‘Beleaguered Vegan‘ by Dominic Berry.
Once upon a time, I was vegetarian and I think it’s time I went back. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the poem.
I love food, it’s effing bliss
but when I’m out with the relatives
they’re analysing my dish
you know that West Indian mission
like back when I was vegetarian
when I was more egalitarian
meat and two veg (eat healthy) they’d convey
but say yes to Appleton and Old Wray
greens and pastas, no meat for Master Tré
quorn, cheese, Weetabix
whilst they would say gimme a bite, just a little bit
they acted like they were all dietitians
that’s how they got their kicks
so many Caribbeans have PhDs in nutrition
now, I’m asked what’s that you got there?
I’ve eaten the flesh of mares
and those meaty pizzas
fantastic beasts and where to find them
cold carcasses of chickens and cows
animals we’re fine putting into our mouths
lamb shank and curry kids. Try Bolognese,
a bacon butty and BBQ ribs
Photo Credit: Lukas Budimaier On Unsplash
but forget about cats, dogs and a horse’s hide
we are British, that would sully our pride
and back then in the ripe old days of 2005
I was too difficult to please
because I wouldn’t eat animal corpses
I would rather bits of kale, crackers and cheese
just not the bones of executions on a platter
I was a child. I wasn’t raised rude
I was just deemed too sensitive to eat dead food
like pigs in blankets and turkey breast
on the Christmas Dinner table
but that is now past, one day, I was tempted
by those Caribbean fables
of fried fish, stewed chicken
yes, I now love meat
but you won’t see me bashing veganism
with hashtags and tweets
as I eat vegan food too, I don’t discriminate
open the hatch, down the shoot
some call me a human dustbin,
and I couldn’t live without
burgers, beers and BBQ chicken
salt fish fritters, breadfruit and chocolate cakes
macaroni, rice and peas and Grandma’s fried bakes
popcorn, roti, and all you can eat buffets on a boat
my gravestone will read death by curry goat
there’s so much food I adore with passion
and I’m not so keen on dessert
but under the covers, right down below
you might find me wrist deep
in a saccharine sweet Black Forest Gateaux
my family were boggled at my choice
but before I was an omnivore, I was a veggie
they thought my food habits were a phase
if a phase was a craze of sixteen years of being kinda edgy
I don’t need to eat meat
but I do, I like it, what I won’t endorse
is torture upon cows, goats
for milk packaged to feed the 7bn
when there’s alternatives like rice and soya
why do we drink other animal’s milk
is this some kinda effed up human paranoia?
Photo Credit: Ja Ma On Unsplash
we do unto people what we do to animals
field beasts supposedly done no harm
people abusing people in FGM and human-trafficking farms
prisoners packed side by side like slaves making our clothes
behind bars rights disposed, brains comatose
systematic abuse industrialised for the masses
to feed us, the working and bourgeois consuming classes
if there really was strength in numbers
the animals would have long rebelled
maybe it’s time I became vegetarian again
and consoled my conscience until the end.
As part of my degree, I was required to write an “object” poem, so I decided to write about the cricket ball in my bedroom and its connotations.
I wrote about the ball, but it’s a metaphor for power, oppression and austerity – some of what my family experienced / saw when they came to this country
Cricket was a tool of the British colonisers but my great-grandfather also loved the game, and I like to think I inherited that from him.
I never met him, he died the year before I was born, 1994.
My great-grandfather Edison ‘Ben-Mark’ Noel came to Britain from Grenada in the early 1960s. Under the British Nationality Act (1948), he and his family were British citizens, including my nine year-old grandmother. Every Caribbean migrant that came between 1948 and 1973 were then known as the Windrush Generation, named for the ship of migrants that arrived at Tilbury after the war.
Why did Ben-Mark like cricket so
must be the ball
carmine like Caribbean colours
victorious since 1962
home from home
Gary Sobers and Clive Lloyd
anthems to the West Indian
between the pages of Small Island
bricks from cars like the slower ball
ooooh mustn’t throw stones yorker, bouncer and googly
tampered leather and broken seams
so why bowl beamers, Amber
Jack’s wind-ripped skin
indelibly etched to foreign fingerprints
My great-grandfather, Edison Noel (known as Ben-Mark) (Photo Credit: Dean Ventour)
Ben-Mark liked to
slam dominoes and kiss teeth ya spake strange
he was at home with those
who didn’t talk like the Queen
hard hands and hot-rolled steel
black and white soldiers
in the vice of Thatcher
more strikes than smoke
stumped behind
given the King Midas touch quack quack to the pavilion
why do I see cricket so
must be the ball
carmine like The Middle Passage.
I wrote this poem after ‘The Real Refugee Crisis’ by one of the best poets in Amsterdam, Kevin Groen – who I’ve seen perform a bunch of times.
This poem’s all about my country, Britain, and how the recent “Immigrant Problem” is a walking contradiction when you look at its history. Nonsense.
is the Windrush
men, women and children
‘born from a sugarcane piece’
from colonies under
the whipping whip hand
of Enoch, Winston and Victoria
centuries of
slavery and land exhaustion
wasn’t that enough
and the only way to survive
was to leave paradise behind
bringing vaguely
European-sounding names
to foreign shores
up against uncertainty
thought British identities
aflame in Brixton and Handsworth
left home to find home
to build a society in monochrome
you say immigrant
that just means native anywhere else
but reverse the roles,
“Brits” getting fat in the midst of Spain
they’re just called expats
same thing really
but newspeak smoulders retina
when immigrants
are black rather than white
seeing seas of rejections
like oceans’ belly didn’t profit in times
of slave mutiny and insurrection
the Windrush arrived at Tilbury
gambling their futures with Mother Empire
identities prickly like barbed wire
used and abused labour
corrupted civil rights no war but the class war people say No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs
bricks through windows
banana skins on the front porch
nigger, coon, monkey chants, wog
now they’re bored of our complaints
Caribbean grandparents
their children and now the grandchildren
my cousins, my brother and I
look it’s happening again
Brexit, UKIP, DUP
can’t you see how court jester MPs
treat citizens like it’s Ireland, Easter 1916?
like it’s the HUAC in 1955
like it’s Nazi Germany,
Gestapo and the Night of the Long Knives?
immigrant land
is the Windrush
the NHS
the Irish coal miners
those “expats” in America and Canada
the Brit(ish) Royal Family,
as all our ancestors went from
place to place as slaves and traders
also “explorers”, I call them invaders
we occupied your nations and stole your land
ripped children from mothers’ arms
trickled out with our lies thinking nobody
would remember fake wars or genocide
Photo Credit: Matteo Paganelli on Unsplash
Ragnar, Boudicca and Edward the Confessor
I could on and on about our unEnglish ancestors
the African Tudors John Blank and Catalina
we took in Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany.
we traded in gold with Ghana, held slaves at Elmina
people came from Australia and New Zealand
India, China, America and Botswana…
don’t listen to those politicians who
talk of English England
England meaning land of Angles
meaning land of Norsemen, Germans
so don’t listen to those sermons
from Eton MPs in their long coats
free movement goes way back (1774)
with Ignatius Sancho
the first man of African descent
in Britain, to exercise his right to vote
and now those who came in the 1950s
the 1980s and the 2010s, called
illegal, rapists and criminals, condemned
we never care to think
what immigration is,
like Voldermort and those horcruxes
where you’re from and where you are
compromising bits of your soul,
it’s assimilation on a budget
at the brunt of backward racial theories
identity politics and mind control
there are no immigrants to be found
in Trump’s internment camps
nor on British streets
and it’s starting to feel Dickensian
pollution, poverty and street lamps
Photo Credit: Jordhan Madec on Unsplash
we’re all immigrants
we’re all people
we’re all citizens of the world
defying invisible borders
to be called nice more than nigger
to be called friend more than feared
that Windrush, that all of us together
wish to find home. To truly belong
Inspired by ‘What’d I Miss?’ from Hamilton, I wrote this poem on the thoughts and feelings I had coming back to Britain in July 2016 after a month’s holiday in India.
How did the former-leader of colonisation
take a vote to declare its own independence?
Immigrant-reliant society
no longer a leading authority
made up of people from former-colonies
government in contempt of democracy
Britain’s all washed up, ready to forfeit
everyone knows we’re walking in corsets
there was once a time
when this country set the precedent,
the Brexit experiment
stupid as American decadence
reels of no deals in a one-party system
listen
I went to India
and came back to this,
switched the TV on
to see May’s new cabinet
one-way or no way like IKEA
no idea which way is up
whilst rolling through wheat fields
what Farage envisaged
as Blyton’s Britain
cucumber sandwiches and green fields
Photographer: Jamie Casap on Unsplash
but what awaits The People in this new place?
Farage, Boris and Mogg strawberry-lace faced
and The People respond with what the hell is going on?
we are ready to war for England’s soul
parliament and public in khaki enrolled
government plan is nothing more than authoritarian control
Spent four weeks in India, arrived to Heathrow’s political abyss
and the revelation of closet racists on my news feed
along with UKIP politics, ‘Britain First’ and ‘English Defence League’
What the hell did I miss?
“You’ve been gone a long time” (four weeks)
