We’re as bad as the rest, we’re racist too.

It comes in a packet, doesn’t cause no pain,

You buy it in toilets, no guilt and no shame.

The councillor says it’s the product of the day,

There’s money in it, and you don’t have to pay.

It’s taken us so long, you get there so fast,

Getting jobs to stop harassment while we get harassed.

Thanks for inviting me to dinner, I think I’m getting fat.

Instant Consciousness – I’d love some more of that.

Airmail to a Dictionary

Airmail to a Dictionary

Black is . . . the shawl of the night,

Secure from sharp paranoiac light.

Black is . . . the pupil of the eye,

Putting colour in the sea’s skin and earthen sky.

Black is . . . the oil of the engine,

On which this whole world is depending.

Black is . . . light years of space,

Holding on its little finger this human race.

Black is . . . the colour of ink,

That makes the history books we print.

Black is . . . the army. Wars in the night,

Putting on the Black to hide the white.

Black is . . . the colour of coal,

Giving work to the miners, warmth to the old.

Black is . . . the shade of the tree,

Sharp in definition against inequality.

Black is . . . the eclipse of the sun,

Displaying its power to every one.

Black is . . . the ink from a history,

That shall redefine the dictionary.

Black on Black is Black is Black is,

Strong as asphalt and tarmac is.

Black is . . . a word that I love to see,

Black is that, yeah, black is me.

The Customs Men

The Customs Men

Breaking out from the plane,

Home’s mouth lays wide open

From the white oesophagus corridors,

Guarded by the English custom of suspicion.

And to prove my situation

I have written this, so that

When they have fingered their

Dirty hands through my clothes,

Mauled my enjoyable flight

With personal questions,

Pricked a little for reaction,

And arrived at my book, I will point them to this poem

Simply to tell them

That I get job satisfaction, in the end,

And they will get nothing but tobacco beneath their nails.

Mind-Walking

Mind-Walking

1

A stray sunshot caught

His heart.

As a child

He spent time

Melting,

Dripping,

Like a fallen lolly on a kerb

In summer.

As a child

He teased questions from his

Black-topped brain,

Like he’d

Lick the bowl when his mother left

The kitchen.

There was always one ultimate question

That arose

While building

Mud pies,

Or staring at cobwebs in hedges.

Only as the full line itched his tongue,

As it had unravelled from his thoughts like a red carpet,

Only when the gravity of his question became its heaviest,

Unbearable almost,

Would he race home and

Stand with the urgency

Of a young boy desperate for a pee.

‘Mum, Mum.’

Who was doing the same thing as he

But in the kitchen,

‘If the earth is