your neighbors running faster than you
 breath bloody in their throats
 the boy you went to school with
 who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
 is holding a gun bigger than his body
 you only leave home
 when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
 fire under feet
 hot blood in your belly
 it’s not something you ever thought of doing
 until the blade burnt threats into
 your neck
 and even then you carried the anthem under
 your breath
 only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
 sobbing as each mouthful of paper
 made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
 that no one puts their children in a boat
 unless the water is safer than the land
 no one burns their palms
 under trains
 beneath carriages
 no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
 feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
 means something more than journey.
 no one crawls under fences
 no one wants to be beaten
 pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
 or strip searches where your
 body is left aching
 or prison,
 because prison is safer
 than a city of fire
 and one prison guard
 in the night
 is better than a truckload
 of men who look like your father
 no one could take it
 no one could stomach it
 no one skin would be tough enough

the
 go home blacks
 refugees
 dirty immigrants
 asylum seekers
 sucking our country dry
 niggers with their hands out
 they smell strange
 savage
 messed up their country and now they want
 to mess ours up
 how do the words
 the dirty looks
 roll off your backs
 maybe because the blow is softer
 than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
 than fourteen men between
 your legs
 or the insults are easier
 to swallow
 than rubble
 than bone
 than your child body
 in pieces.
 i want to go home,
 but home is the mouth of a shark
 home is the barrel of the gun
 and no one would leave home
 unless home chased you to the shore
 unless home told you
 to quicken your legs
 leave your clothes behind
 crawl through the desert
 wade through the oceans
 drown
 save
 be hunger
 beg
 forget pride
 your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
 saying-
 leave,
 run away from me now
 i dont know what i’ve become
 but i know that anywhere
 is safer than here