Haiti Remembered, a year on

God bless the people of Haiti. A year tomorrow since.

A year ago I lay alone.

Prone

On a Birmingham hotel bed.

I thought of the dead,

The dying

The living, the crying.

I won’t deny my eyes watered

For trapped sons and daughters.

The news channel delivered to me,

First reports of an earthquake in Haiti.

A country born from fight,

A flag made once ripped out the white

From the Tricolour.

No room for the defeated oppressor’s colour.

And yet a nation still miles from home.

Kings and Queens from ancestral homes.

The strength of people

Who had delivered themselves from evil.

A dagger through the imperial heart.

Even Napolean had been Blownapart. 

And don’t allow the French Connection

To let England hide it’s intended direction.

Abolition of the holocaust trade

Had economic reasons made

From Hispaniola’s wealthy curse.

Britain simply wanted to bankrupt the French purse.

But the war never really ended.

The West’s ego was still offended.

A worldwide conspiracy to make them pay,

Debt still owed from an enslaved day.

External influences, the european tool,

Always success through divide and rule.

Then nature raised it’s sword and slashed,

As if hurricanes hadn’t been enough.

My emotions raw at the news,

And yet my donations were abused,

Crates sat on runways,

No one digging dust from airways

Choked behind crushed doors.

Cardboard beds on hospital floors,

And the D.E.C.

Sucked D.I.C.

Today, foreign intervention,

Whatever the intention

Has sky high’d rent.

So even more are living in tents.

Aid workers there assisting,

Are causing eviction.

The media a year on in this nation…

I’m just seeing photographers on vacation.

Roll up for a tragedy pose

As life Flickr’s out with shots of toes

Curled from cholera’s grip.

How much more of this shit.

Does Haiti have to take?

The UN not protecting girls from rape.

Instead bringing in disease.

Is the cure only in keeping things clean?

I don’t know about you.

I was innoculated at school.

And still money sits and waits.

While someone earns interest from unopened crates.

Europeans rush to adopt kids like vultures

So keen to bring them up in alien cultures.

Fuck your wealth to import children.

Instead pay a family to construct a home, a building,

And stop taking from mothers whose womb has birthed

On a Caribbean island, their African earth.

I don’t doubt the resolve of this nation.

History hasn’t yet defeated a Haitian.

Let the mirror show where lies the sin.

Reflect what will be, and what has been.