Refugee

We’re given a single life to live
We do not choose where we come in
We do not choose the country where we are born
We do not choose the household
Or parents to which we belong.

We have the benefit of internet
We have the luxury of TV and music
That penetrates the border net
Whether we live in Mali or Bolivia
We can see the life in America

The differences between man and woman
From the United States and Liberia
Lie not in wants, desires, or ability
But in the opportunity to have
What is on TV.

The man and woman of third world
Have no hope for freedom or economics
In their life span. Once they have children
They see in their eyes
The opportunity not given to their lives
That lie in look back at them from pages of magazines

They have but one ability to change their life,
They have but one choice and opportunity to risk it all

If you were born in a refugee camp
Living in a tent surrounded by war, poverty and disease
If someone told you that in a month of walking
Over hot desert sands
You could be in a land
That you see on TV
With shops full of food
Cars on the street

Would you not take that chance?
Would you not risk your life
Would you not run across mountains and cross a sea
Face death’s possibility
Rather than live one more day in filth and degradation of a state
Created by colonization of the west?
Your way of life was destroyed by centuries of European war
Your family and way of life are not longer possible to have
The west in its destruction of its land
Required yours and killed your relatives, your kings

And after they had taken all,
Created war and strife and poverty
Brought medicines to make people survive
But took all opportunity to live
They guard their waters
In fear that you might want to live like them
That you might want to
Escape the hell that they had brought
Onto your people and your land

They guard their waters and watch
The men and women sink in the inflated rafts
The women screaming with their sole posetion
Their hungry, thirsty kids
Who never picked the place where they were born
Never picked this suffering or lot

This lot brought upon them
By the Western world
This suffering that those who cause it
Refuse to end.
Hoarding riches stolen from the far off land
Refusing to give those who had their lives stolen
To reach the benefits of all they gave.