I call this place home,
The air strong with cooking oil and forgotten dreams,
Hands shackled by poverty, dry income streams,
Babies wailing, mothers raging,
Taxis hooting and happiness fleeting,
Roaring laughter and loud whispers,
This keeps us afloat,
Because where I’m from only the rich survive,
Very few and far between,
Bogus and ill-received,
At the expense of lives caught in the faux web of democracy,
Casting Xs in vain,
Having to endure the stench and the stain,
Held together by fleeting happiness and alcoholism,
This sphere of habit lurks around every corner,
Seeks to cling onto those naive enough to test it,
Here, where school exists but education falters,
This is the place I’m from,
And where I’m from,
People get lucky,
Where I’m from,
Those people grab tight and never let go,
Because it’s people like this who saw a chance to flee,
Imagined a world and went out to see,
But you know, I am from there,
And me?
Well, I am barely scraping by,
Surviving,
But you see,
The place I’m from conceives you without notice,
Births you without permission,
Pukes you into the harsh reality of injustice,
This cancer never goes into remission,
Forever active,
It smothers you in the waste and pulls you back up to face the music,
This symphony we dance to is foreign,
But it has been playing and continues to play,
Ever so subtle yet pervasive,
So we dance,
Barely breathing, but you see,
This song, monotonous and dull as it is,
Where I come from,
We call it reality,
And if you smell a stench, you don’t recognise,
Gear up!
Here, you sink or swim,
Here, you survive
Or plunge deeper into the desert we call home.