Refuge Reveals the Window Through Which We See Our Own Humanity

 

Refuge is the Window

 

Home is where the heart is,

But what if you don’t have a home?

What if a new home doesn’t have a heart?

Where can you go?

When you are a stranger,

When life is danger,

Where your humanity is overlooked,

When sanity is thrown overboard,

When empathy is shipwrecked,

For border protection,

Is the high fence between incarceration

And death,

To excise is to remove the blight,

To exercise human rights is to approve

The right to be human.

 

Each nation state is a fortress to race,

It creates a schism in the human face,

Where human cargo is abruptly moved on as if a cattle cart,

When the charter of human rights has become corrupted as an art,

For nations are no longer united,

To bring peace and security,

A sovereign exchange traded for profit,

But who profits when we step out of conventions?

When we refuse refuge stirring tensions,

For messages become mixed,

The melting pot begins to boil,

Those born on this soil,

Are not the salt of the earth but toil,

There is no higher sanction at birth,

That dictates belonging,

Dividing ethnic groups by psychological boundaries,

Where we decide who arrives,

Who is detained,

Who is ordained with refugee status.

 

For what is guiding our decisions?

Is it compassion?

Is it the 1951 Convention for Refugees?

Or do we do as we please?

Do we create smoke?

Where we screen who is for us,

Who is against us?

For the bottom line is economic.

 

We profit from our choices,

For we see no value in humanity,

For it has not been costed,

Only accosted for breaking elastic rules,

But never conventions,

For governments must ratify their obligations,

It is a mutual obligation,

Where boundaries are redrawn.

 

Christmas was once an island of generosity,

For the present no longer exists,

For any arriving at Christmas are aliens,

It is illegal to seek refuge,

Yet what we do to the least of humankind,

Is done to the spirit of your own kind,

For to be unkind is sublime,

For you are implicated in a crime against humanity,

It is a crime not only of reason,

But a crime of compassion,

Where passion is dumbed down.

 

The passion of Christ is a violent crucifixion

yet no-one walks on water,

The mass succumb to the prophesy’s,

From the pulpit of fear,

To terrorise the lamb,

Is the real terrorism.

 

The innocent and simple,

Have no defence,

For the ignorant have no question mark,

For many are talking in tongues,

For how can the non-sensible become sensible,

How can rules that are inaudible become a new song?

How can the truth be seen when it is not visible?

 

For is justice truly blind,

When one cannot see to hear to speak,

When powers are not separated,

Yet overlapping jurisprudence,

Stepping over habeas corpus,

For many are dying on route,

Smugglers are exploiters of truth,

Officials are in denial of response-ability.

 

For we are able to respond,

When we have real power,

The power of reason,

The power of truth,

The power of justice,

This is the true measure of balanced scales,

For the tide is turning,

International law is learning,

That politics is working against the nations interest.

 

Interest is in power and control,

It is this that tips the scales,

As the circles of influence overlap,

Powers that separate dictate the new world order,

A new chaos theory,

Where old paradigms are repeated infinitum,

Imperial empires will spiral down,

For civil society is the waking dragon,

A new character that will raise its sleepy head,

For the year of the rat is misfortune,

The year of the butterfly is metamorphosis,

From the cocoon of sleep,

Awareness takes flight,

For it is right to be fully human,

This is a human right,

Universal values are inalienable,

They are inevitable,

For a new spirit is rising from the east.

 

The wisdom of old poets will weave a new carpet,

As Aladdin is seeking a new horizon,

He is seeking his shining lamp,

For all along he is shown the way,

The genie in the bottle will grant him three wishes,

Wishes he has earned,

For the urn of his yearning contains …
truth, justice and freedom of speech,

To see no evil,

To hear no evil,

To speak no e v i l is the rare vision

that can l i v e,

For his message has reach,

In the fallout of Ash-more-reef.

 

As many tongues are speaking,

But there is no confusion,

For they see clearly the way ahead,

For he is part of the vanguard,

A rear guard action,

In a sea of inaction.

 

His suffering is not in silence,

There is no silence of the lambs,

He has carved courage across the hardship of sea shells,

Yet the sand from the desert,

Wears down the mightiest walls,

For truth can never be covered up,

Isolated in solitary confinement,

Drugged in internment,

For one can never forget injustice,

It wells up from the spring waters,

For the sand creates the pearl,

And this is the pearl of wisdom,

We have been waiting for.

 

Aladdin has a gift that shines brightly,

For he made it home to truth,

Home is where his heart is,

And love is the answer he is seeking,

For despite those that came against him,

In the dark nights of his attack,

His humanity remains intact,

His sanity is a fact,

For only the strength of love can endure such a trial,

And that is the light on the hill,

The lamp in the darkness,

The hope for humanity,

For in his eyes,

Is the window to our freedom.