Freedom

Houses, framed with dust,
like ivory along dormant windows,
sits squatting in the horizon.
Blinking like a golden Buddha’s head,
rippling in the sun.
A boy engraves his initials onto a tree;
he tells his mother its one of Afghanistan's wonders of the world.
She smiles but he thinks their history is dead,
and he prays that his fingertips will soon unearth something.

Ride home, ride home.
Leave us all alone with our screaming children,
Leave us all alone with our understaffed hospitals-
which hang the flags of hope.
Leave us all alone with our mud roads and limited
technology.
Ride home, ride home.

Chidren ignore the echoing calls about terrorists,
whilst corrupt police patrol the streets.
They watch them bury their legs into a beggar’s rib,
"tsks" his tongue like a warning of an onsought of words,
takes his hope and buries it in the mud.
It's all so wrong, can it only get worse?
No second chances for the people amidst the war.
When people’s homes are littered with corruption-
like ashfall.

Ride home, ride home.
Leave us all alone with our screaming children,
Leave us all alone with our understaffed hospitals-
which hang the flags of hope.
Leave us all alone with our mud roads and limited
technology.
Ride home, ride home.

His grandchild travels back from Pakistan
after years encaged in a bedsit,
bones wrapped around the warmth of an electric heater.
He returns home to bury his granddad,
wraps him in cloth like a blessing.
Apologises to his son that he can never show him where he grew up
and he doesn't know when he'll be able to take him home.
Nobody's fighting for a reason they're sure of. Yet we hear
both sides of the argument, leave or stay.