MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE

MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE

Dalit Woman

A child of twelve-looks-back quite dignified

moderately sad dragging her cloth-sack

across lands slanting upwards putrefied.

Skies above filled with scavenging crows, glide

sourcing a better livelihood or snack

in swooping, darting zigzags maniac.

While barefoot urchins search filth festering-

dumps; sweet faces covered in oily-smears

straight-backed, shoulders slouched go peppering

obscenities of our wealth pig-swilling

collecting plastics ankle-deep in weirs

- of rotting putrid waste like pioneers.

Staking out each square-yard for survival

Dalit survival is no easy task

their castes bar them any land or title

social leprosy is a life direful

living hand to mouth with expressions blank

feeding tribe's their clan's apathy mean track.

Let's Exist On Bread And Water

Someone's praying behind that architrave

Trying to make a living keep some faith,

Write poetry in short communiqués

Tears abridging the years enshrined molten,

Now we're all charged with others' lives to save;

But in truth, we all feel broken wide open.

If I'm not mistaken I-am-enslaved

Never the less we are all prisoners;

Our neighbours are very, easily swayed

To inform the local authorities;

It's now I fear all those Grand Inquisitors'

Their divergent-sneers their ideologies:

Tormented - let's exist on bread and water

Remember that in some other quarter

Death is in government and in-complete-

Control firing bullets in war-torn streets

Who cares if-we're-seen kissing indiscreet

Long as our hearts - isn't heavy with deceits.

It's Just Hard Luck

The face of poverty is here again

the silent vagrant without a friend

sits cross-kneed watching businessmen

in suits and ties condescend-

their needs, filling pockets out of greed

they aren't moved by the homeless

they all stand together, black-millipede

looking at you like you're dead begonias.

They aren't bothered that your livelihood

was destroyed, they made a fast buck

let's not kid ourselves theirs no brotherhood

when they look at you, it's just hard luck.

Oh, and if you're lucky they might just put

a few old silver coins in your flannel cap

maybe enough to feed that bed companion

that sad old greyhound dog sat on your lap

have a nice-day, sir! Don't forget to come back.

Harriet Tubman

He-carried those scars in-her fractured skull

Praying God to make him, change his ways,

She'd pray simultaneously for the improbable,

Pray for freedom that of her family's always.

Her hair which had never been-combed

Stood out like a bushel basket and it had saved her

When she was-hired out: hit by a metal weight

She thanked the Lord and blessed her faith.

Her unrelenting, master wanted her quick sale

‘People came to look at me; he was trying to sell me.'

But, as such and such, no sale did prevail;

‘Injury had caused her a temporal-lobe-epilepsy.'

‘She changed her prayer, ‘she said. ‘First of March

I began to pray, ‘Oh Lord,

If you aren't ever going to change that man's heart,

Kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way.'

She even prayed all night for her master's death

For her own ‘Liberty or death,

‘If I could not have one, I would have the other.'

‘Harriet Tubman confessed to a negro brother.'

The Lord answered Brodess died a week later.

She ascribed to visions revelations from God.

‘I was a stranger in a strange land, ‘she said later.

When she escaped into her freedoms esplanade;

Tubman travelled by night, guided by the North Star,

When winter the nights are long and dark.

Avoiding slave catchers, she said, in coded song.

Farewell. ‘I'll meet you in the morning, ‘Mary

Fellow slaves ‘I'm bound for the promised land.'

She carried a revolver and was not afraid to use it.

She made many journeys forth and back

To free other, folk she always came in the winter,

When-nights were long and impenetrably dark.

When morale sank guided by the North Star,

And when one man insisted on going back to the plantation,

She pointed a gun at his head then said.

‘You go on or die. I never ran my train off-

The track and I never lost a passenger.

‘I'm bound only for the promised land.'

MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE

MARK ANDREW HEATHCOTE is from Manchester in the UK, author of “In Perpetuity” and “Back on Earth” two books of poems published by a CTU publishing group ~ Creative Talents Unleashed, Mark is adult learning difficulties support worker, who began writing poetry at an early age at school.