Dubai Days manuscript

Exile



Nov 17


The years prey upon the months and the months
cannibalise the minutes.

They give birth astride an open grave.

Before life breathes, it is all too soon finished.


Exile.

Stand so they can knock you down again

And walk away and walk forever on.

Your journey is never done.



"Stood at the window,

From the white silence
Of my hermitage,

I can see the coming storm.

A tornado tears the world apart at the horizon.



And the bile burbles dragging

It's rancid green across the sand."


There's a death come upon living men.

There is a dearth of giving men,

A lacking of kind men.

The stars bumble like blind men

Without a hand or a stick

To find their way.


Exile.

Stand so they can knock you down again

And walk away and walk forever on.

Your journey is never done.



How much the years teach which the days never
know.
Your exiled son stands at the threshold
Ready again to go.
Unsure how to let go
Or where now to run



Or into which crevice crawl

To lick his wounds like an animal shot to blood
profusion

And find a secret hole in which to lie down to die
without intrusion.



Exiles live with unpacked suitcases and unmade
beds

Always waiting for that knock on the door
To again erase their presence.

To extend their unsteady pasts

Into uncertain futures.

The clouds are forming blood and acid in their
bellies.

At the shore, mangled wreckage is foaming.




Exile.

Stand so they can knock you down again

And walk away and walk forever on.

Your journey is never done.















This is a detail from a painting by the Nigerian
abstract expressionist artist Yusuf Seidu Okus.

To learn more about his exhibitions and to purchase
his work, please visit
http://artbyyusufokus.blogspot.com/

Exodus



Nov 17


Love is the only ammunition you should need.

It is those armed with this to whom we owe thanks.

A man stands before an armoured tank.

Civil disobedience and exodus during mass strife.

Money can't buy life.

Money can't buy time.
Money can't buy love.

The uncivilised heathen worship money.

They clamour for power

They haven't earnt.

They espouse values and preach wisdom they
haven't learnt.
They are all waiting in vain

Having so many things to say

For the day

When guiltiness will be mistaken for innocence

And kindness for weakness



And ignorance for intelligence.

Turn away your eyes,

Turn your lights down low
So you don't see their ugly lies.

Three little birds will fly

To proclaim peace on earth;

We come as one.

One world, one love, one race,

As at petty pace life edges to the cold rim of dusty
graves.

In cloisters, monks huddle scrawling on scriptures

To change the truth

As jazz musicians are jamming

In smoky cafes

And gaunt painters are stroking

Canvasses with pained colours,
Black and blue,

What is actually true

Is that the natural mystics

Are not in churches or mosques or synagogues.

They are in line at the post office



Or buying chops at the butchers

Or being bored by droning teachers

Or looking askance at TV preachers
Or sweeping the streets after Mardi Gras.

The future is an extension of the past;

And if the past was turbulent but progressive,

So shall the future be.

So people get ready.

Go steady to the door of the present that fills you
with sorrow

To let in all your smiling tomorrows.

Fat of the Land



May 18


Violent necessity

Has got me

Ripped.



Pipped

To the post by spite.
Little matter.



Fatter.

Living off the fat of the land

Is better than pilfering crumbs.



Triggered.
I figured you would be.

I let you cripple your own needs.

Strum

And play me your swan song.

Your work here is done.











































On Watching a Child Labourer One Early
Morning in Kathmandu


It was to Dolakha I was to go to help a group of
schools by conducting teacher-training sessions and
evaluating their policies, procedures and practices
through demonstration lessons.

I met the chairman, a friend of a mutual friend, who
was a School Headmistress, on Nakhu Bridge.
7 am and the dusty streets of Nakhu Dobato were
frayed with trundling buses and jalopies, cyclists and
grocers, samosa sellers and school children, grubby
street dogs and fresh looking teenage boys with black
hair bleached copper and teenage girls intensely
chatting into mobile phones clasped tightly against
ears.


Before the 8 hour bus journey to Dolakha, the
chairman needed first to visit a local ironsmith to
collect building materials. He stoically informed me
that the great earthquake of 2015 had pulverised his
school to rubble and ruin and now the rebuilding of
the school would begin. His house had also been
blighted and for the last year his family had been
living in a shanty tent.

Tragic tales of the aftermath of the great earthquake
are ubiquitous in Nepal. You hear them everywhere;

lost lives, demolished buildings, financial strain on
an already economically groaning country.


Sitting as we waited, I watched a boy at work at the
ironsmiths. He cannot have been more than 12 or 13
years of age. His tiny frame was svelte and emaciated
but determinedly robust. His face was impish and
chiselled. It wore about it a look of wilful aloofness.
In any other country, he would be at a desk in a
classroom learning to read and write and larking
about mischievously with his friends during breaks
and playing on some electronical device at home and
finding juvenile ways to court the amorous attention
of girls.

But this boy was a full time labourer supporting his
family by running his household and putting food on
the table.



The tools he clutched in small smooth hands were
extremely crude yet ingeniously effective - a
handmade wooden mallet, pliers to cut sheets of
metal, wooden and metal rods and tubes to bend and
curve materials, a plank of wood balanced in a right
angle nook of an upturned foot stool to act as a vice.


I watched as he cut up metal sheets, hammered them
on the edge of the wooden plank to form ridges and

joints, curve them by beating them against the metal
tube and then weld them together to make the joining
tubes for guttering that was to be attached to a roof.


In the crisp midwinter morning of Kathmandu, I
watched the child labourer as he connected the
welding machine and blow torch to the mains. There
was no plug. The two conducting electrical wires
protruded from the rubber tube of the cable. He
inserted the copper wires into the holes in the socket
and held them in place using match sticks.



As the sawing and welding began, a spectacular
fountain of sparks cascaded off the metal pieces and
tools. The thick jet of star shaped scintillas
ricocheted off the ground and on his boots. As the
mini fireworks display lit up the contours of his jeans
and jacket and puggish profile, he looked away from
the waterfall of sparks - as he possessed no safety
googles to protect his eyes. He also had no gloves to
protect his hands. With casual panache this
adolescent boy carried out these hazardous tasks.

His colleague, a wiry man in his late 20s with a wispy
moustache and sunken, doleful eyes, looked on
nonchalantly as he simonised a brass pot with a
greasy suede cloth.

The infra dig matter of child labour or men and
women toiling 15 hours a day daily to earn £300 a
month, is sadly all too common in a country like
Nepal. The Nepalese are not in want of skilled
workers, gifted artists, astute intellectuals and
administrators, talented artisans, a hard working
labour force or natural resources. They simply lack
the wherewithal to escape the cycle of poverty which
palls their lives.


It is all too easy to speak in platitudes about the
wretched plight of the impoverished and the inequity
of the ever increasing rich-poor divide. No state will
ever fully eradicate poverty forever; but that is not to
say there is no hope. The answers lie in communities
working together, individuals consuming less,
supporting local businesses and cottage industries
and being willing, through philanthropic endeavours,
to share the wealth they do have for the boon of those
who don't. We must put moral responsibility and
social conscience before personal gain and material
exigency. We cannot rely entirely upon government
officials and politicians to help. Our own conscience
is more suasive in ensuring better relief for the less
financially fortunate among us.



And there are many of them. The ironsmith child
labourer is just one of many millions in Nepal and
one of many billions in the world and his simple

example evinces the dire straits in which large
swathes of humanity live on our planet.