You think you know
what it is to be in the black hole
under the paws
of the black dog
surrounded by and suffocating from
a black heart
because you have been there.
You say
you have been there.
I say you are lying;
I see that you are lying,
but I forgive you.
There is no way for you to know
what it is to dwell in that place.
If you had been there,
if you had been
to the motherland,
if you had lived
within that country,
where the language is self hate
and the currency is despair,
and the daily rituals
are just as much blood letting
even if there is no blade in sight,
if you had been there,
you would understand
you can never be an expatriate.
You can never emigrate
from this barren soil.
You will never call anywhere else
home again,
no matter where you were born,
no matter where your feet currently stand.
At some point,
for whatever reason
–because of a tumour,
or a chemical,
or a breakup,
or the sun wasn’t bright enough,
or your ma died,
or your da touched you,
or no one loved you,
or your girlfriend killed herself,
or your granmother beat you,
or you’re 43 years old, living in a skip, and hooked on powder,
or for no fucking reason at all–
the black country called you,
claimed you,
stamped in your passbook an irrevocable mark,
uneraseable,
unburnable.
If you attempt
to get a new one,
it will be issued with that crest
enfoiled on the front,
blinding and proud.
It owns you now.
If you have ever lived there,
you live there, still.
You cannot visit that country,
learn the language,
use the currency,
and walk out alive.
You cannot leave.
We cannot leave.
I cannot leave.
Do not stand there
in your strength
and promise me there is a path.
This is my country,
and its borders are wild,
populated with monsters only I can see,
monsters that want my flesh.
If I get to you,
and stand with you
in your lands,
you must remember this:
I am not escaped.
I am merely on an expired visa,
and I am about to be deported.
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