"Home" by Warsan Shire

7 December 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following poem exposes the hypocrisy of world governments closing their borders to a human crisis: the wave of humanity fleeing intolerable living conditions created by the workings of an imperialist system that results in obscene inequality, spiralling injustices, wars, invasions and occupations. It was is written by the 23 year-old Somali born, London-based author and educator Warsan Shire. Reposted widely on the Net, it speaks sharply to the arguments that most governments and reactionaries the world over are using to declare that people from oppressed countries do not have the same rights as those who happen to be born in the countries that oppress them.
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbours running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn't be going back.
you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied
no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer
than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough
the
 go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange


savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child's body

in pieces.


i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans


drown

save

be hungry

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-
leave,

run away from me now

i don't know what i've become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here