Social Waste

Let’s say you are born rich, with houses and yachts and summer houses
And that you belong to the category that we call “good society”
You first saw the light in a clinic, of course a private one
You went to the kindergardens and the crèches and in general started off smoothly
And then there came that moment that they send you to school
To receive an education that would be saint, and as you may have guessed not public
To make it more specific, let’s say fate was keeping for you
To live in Athens, London, Paris, and in general somewhere in the ‘West’
To attend the best Universities, to mix with the Academia,
and the economic, political, and cultural elite
to have a life average of a bit less than 80, not to need to ever wait in the line
everything in your life to be going smoothly –the rhyme is not coming out- but I won’t give you more clichés about money
because in fact for you to have health, even technology will be running for your sake
And you won’t care, why would you? What does it mean “the roof is leaking”?
You will wear the eponymous clothes, will drink the expensive alcoholic drinks
Will turn the page in the newspaper, looking for news from the world and the motherland
You ‘ll light a cigarette and plan how and where you’ll spend you holidays
you ‘ll get a car, you ‘ll say ‘i’m fine’, you ‘ll want to put our life in order
because so they say we should, those who supposedly are as they “should be”
And you won’t search for explanations, and then your turn will come…to persuade the others

It is a topic of your concern
This world is wearing two masks
One in the South, and another in the North
And it is not all fine
It is for that that I cannot stand this world’s powerful
That are trying to enter inside me
To talk to me, to persuade me…for them to win

And not forget it all and let’s say that you were born in Marrakech
In Sierra Leone, and in Liberia, in Senegal, and Mauritania
No it wasn’t in a hospital, neither did you ever go to school
You did not buy toys from a Mall, neither will you live for long
Maximum 50 years, provided that life will be nice with you
And you don’t come across problems of course, like civil wars and coups
If you get used to a self-sustaining life, and if you don’t happen to step on a landmine
Then you will be of the lucky ones, and of the strong organisms
And you may even get some education, you never know, you may even grow old
You will have a salary of less than 2 dollars, and malaria for your company
They may even photograph you, you may even reach the Pulitzer prizes
You ‘ll have a life of doubtful quality and 15 minutes of publicity
Or let’s say you are born a girl in Pakistan, in the tribal areas
Not to be reached by miracles, neither of men nor of gods
Or somewhere in Egypt, a child-worker in the tobacco fields or in China
to be manufacturing shoes, shirts, and balls or to be of those kids
that a different fate prevailed on them, and had a Blue-helmet for a rapist
In Port-au-Prince or in Monrovia, and got an ever lasting stamp
For that I cannot stand the world’s powerful that try to enter inside me
To talk to me, and persuade me….for them to win…