I cant make it to Dublin for the demo at the Dáil at 1pm to end Direct Provision. So Im posting a poem instead. Brian Fleming and myself got this together, me the words, him the music, nearly 15 years ago. We did it again last week for the Afri Hedge School in Blanchardstown IT, and well be doing it around the place now as necessary. Direct Provision. Away back sometime early in the year 2000 Comhlamh gave me a booklet they were launching. It was called ”Direct Provision”, and dealt with new regulations being quietly brought in. I read it. I could not believe it was for real, that Irish ministers and public servants had worked together on this plan. That was fifteen years ago. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been herded along the Irish direct provision tunnel of misery. Here’s what Brian and I performed in places around the country a decade and a half ago, in the old-money days. The weekly allowance of 19 euro per asylum-seeker under Direct Provision now was called 15 pounds – Irish punts - back then. Sleeping, eating, thinking, sleeping, eating, thinking, fifteen pounds a week – what else but sleeping, eating, thinking. You’re in your rainy centre looking out the door on your fourth cup of too-weak tea at the people passing by in cars and on buses and wheeling bikes mammies with buggies and kids with mits and a lollipop lady dodging the splashes from lorries in the pothole puddles ... And you think how you would like to have somewhere to go and something busy to do in the falling morning rain but you’re consigned, asylum-seeker you’re confined to sleeping, eating, thinking, sleeping, eating, thinking, on fifteen pounds a week – what else but Sleeping – eating - thinking. Meanwhile, in a Dublin Justice office way up high, a moustachioed man smelling of too much Brut addresses the wide-eyed room. “What the present influx needs is a cage with invisible bars .. – a secure holding chamber where the walls are not necessary not requiring to be seen do you see what I mean .. ? Glances and blinks, nodding and winks. “Now for a little dart of honesty to shatter the polite ice of PC before we break for coffee and tea:- No walls and bars you see because the shackles are installed in the mind, like a chip, systematically lodged, psychologically imbedded, the incarcerator’s dream of inflicting maximum discomfort leaving no external marks .. Forgive the bluntness of the logic but call a spade a spade and look – no marks .. Therefore nothing to complain about – look, no marks! In a front row seat attentive bushy eyebrows are peaking over cobalt eyes. Blink. Blank. We’re in Dispersal Centre number thirty-one. The local paper’s open on the table with the lists of jobs you’d love to try. Someone’s even circled some with glitter lipstick ‘cos she couldn’t find a pen, maybe going to disappear and live as no-name no-know-where-I-came-from somewhere in Africaaaahaha mister .. Not for me, don’t want to be always checking my back for the tap on the shoulder that means – caught working, a major offence lucky no hanging or electric chair you’ll just be sent to where you came from and try your luck back there, try your luck back there .. phoo .. I could explain to you but hey, you just haven’t got a clue, like that refugee appeals commissioner who boasts he never let one case through. Bully for you! Still raining out in the air mammies coming home from the school run now and a bus and a lorry splash past and the lollipop lady chats to Mick the securityman at our barrier-gate, keeping us safe and sound and snug in our beds, smiling he says, and I nod and return the smile each time, I know better than to question, I know better than to question out loud. Two weeks later, same time, same place:- closeup: those attentive bushy eyebrows again, registering surprise, peaking over cobalt eyes, he’s taken aback by fifteen silver coins placed in an s on the formica tabletop. Outside, the sound of a ball hop. The s we say is the snake we say, wrapped around the Tree of Knowledge denying us the shelter of its strong yet gentle boughs. Not allowed work nor study for degree, fifteen pounds a week, we say, think about it, fifteen pounds a week. Cobalt eyes blink. Blank. “But you can come and go – you’re free how ungrateful can you be, you have tv .. I’m here to listen to what you have to say. However, Let’s Be Clear! Talking glib parables is all very well but who’s going to pay to give yous all a say in how you’d like to be pampered and puffed .. there are lots who’d say just go and get stuffed. We have our homeless poor that we need to care for too – “ Suddenly a ball flies over the wall shatters the window and lands in the hall. It bounces around ‘til it gets to its feet then wags its finger as it takes a seat. “Eyebrows you never gave a toss about the homeless before you’re wrecking my head now you’re makin it sore”. Cobalt eyes fix on the ball. Can it really have spoken? For a sec he’s in thrall. “I’m Jiminy Sliothar your conscience you see? Your greed is stronger than your sense of memory. Your ancestors went away and worked wherever they were let, The Irish - economic migrant champs, don’t forget!” He picks up the sliothar to throw it away but it isn’t really there and all he does is flay. Cobalt eyes the fifteen coins in an s on the table, snake-like ready to strike. For some reason he thinks of Saint Patrick – mad but true! He was a less than happy immigrant who was put in detention too .. aah boing boing boing goes Cobalt Eyes’s conscience ball, he’ll burst the bloody thing once and for all! Six months later still Dispersal Centre Thirty-one, waiting to be called for interview sooooooneternitynoon. Still sleeping, eating, thinking, sleeping, eating, thinking, fifteen pounds a week, what else but sleeping, eating, thinking. MTV is on .. MTV is on .. Television culture when you’re not allowed to work – a refined form of torture, like being buried in muck. National Geographic – quick flash of a place like home but it’s only a chocolate ad and then it’s back to that underwater shark thing again with their razor teeth and the screen filling with blood as you sink face down into the ocean of your top bunk bed, smother in the pillow of down down depressing done down. And then you dream. Your grandmother playing marbles but it’s in your bunkered cell she doesn’t deserve to be here but she smiles and says don’t ever forget where your came from love and then you fly through the water window and up in the sky and you see below the lollipop lady clinging to a stricken raft and Mick Securityman’s cap bobbing in the foaming swell of the choppy brine as he gasps for the third time - But the Brut-smelly moustache man on the bridge of the Metropolis splits the craft in two saying “No offence intended it’s what I’m paid to do” and Cobalt Eyes behind him nods in sorrowful compliance as a burst sliothar plummets in the fathomless. And you wake to hear on the news about eight found dead and two of them are children in the back of a container truck just like the one you paid to get aboard at that place in France, and you remember the sweat and the heat and the sweet smell of a little girl’s bubblegum in the black airless box like a coffin when your torch went dead and the sitting in the no movement no noise no nothing only all to do is hope the man comes back, hope the man comes back. You think about it every night here now in your bunk bed gazing at the ceiling two feet away as you lift your hands to check that they’re free and you shake your wrists to hear the clankedy-clanks of fifteen pounds a week, look – no marks, no clankeda-clankeda-clankeda So you walk down the town to think it all through from a fresh point of view – there has to be a way to see the underlying fair play everyone Irish can’t just be that blasé that they turn away as if you don’t exist clanking your chains behind you fifteen clank-a-clank fifteen clank-a-clank But you really need to make that phonecall home! You wait until six so you get the cheap rate but when you get through there’s only granny home Coin Drop and she can’t quite hear you shout as loud as you can Coin Drop but she can’t even figure out who it is Coin Drop you spell your name slowly in letters Coin Drop but she can’t quite get it you’re making it worse Coin Drop that’s five pounds gone click you have to try again tomorrow .. Fifteen pounds a week .. fifteen pounds a week .. Maybe a letter would be better, pity that the envelopes are only sold in packs, and the stamp is 34% of your daily allowance. You go into a café, order a coffee, cadge a loan of their pen. That’s one pound fifty please, add on 68% of two pounds fourteen pee a day, fifteen clankeda clank look, no marks .. No cause for the slightest complaint, look, no marks. But some day you’ll strike it lucky meet someone nice like that friendly girl at the till just now who winked as she handed you back your fiver with the coffee as if it was change and said “don’t let them get you down”, and the pen she gave you is an anti-apathy pen. Don’t let them get you down, she said, so you write a much better letter home than you’d otherwise have managed and you feel you’re not alone, and you feel that maybe there’s a way of shaking off the fifteen clankeda clanks dragging your spirit down. ‘Cos there’s a whole lot more to life than sleeping, eating, thinking, no matter how much the clankeda-clank manufacturers thought they’d invented the perfect invisible spirit-breaker that leaves no external marks .. There’s always the magic of contact, the impact of empathy, a challenge to compliance with The Way Things Are, the capacity to melt the barcode shackleda clanks of two pounds and fourteen pee a day. There’s no nice way to say it. Direct provision is cruel. It’s intended to be cruel. A pull-factor deterrent to flush out any airy-fairy prospect of dreams - two pounds and fourteen pee a day, look – no marks! No risk of glossy photos in an Amnesty report, just – fifteen pounds a week and your spirit, some of us would like, being honest, to crush, in our impervious fist, and let the juices trickle down, to pool and gradually congeal, covering our faces looking up from the old blotched mirror underneath. Unless we decide to remember, with action, in the present, guided by the wisdom learned the hard way on our painful quest from the land of our past. Direct Provision must be ended, asylum-seekers’ right to work allowed, the right to study, and no more deportations. Fifteen years of Irish cruelty and shame must be ended. No excuses! No postponement! No backslide! End the torture of “look – no marks”! Ireland, remember where you came from – Now! Saoirse! Amandla! Uhuru! Then we can say - Éire abú!
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:25:55 +0000
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