Parting At Poitier

This work conveys the stress, anger, misery and frustration that migrant separation thrusts upon the individuals concerned. Ripped from your loved ones because of your nationality by bureaucracy.

Parting At Poitier

 

Three years of fighting bureaucracy

Refused entry, no visa, go back home

Finally, A ‘chance in France’

Marriage and all that

Perhaps even a shot at happiness

A real life with dignity.

 

Not so fast son, this is Europe remember?

We only speak about rights in words

You don’t actually think we mean it do you?

No No, I’m sorry mate you don’t understand

Russians don’t count, they’re not real people like us

She’ll have to go back home to her homeland.

 

She believed this, I never could because

I’m an anarchist you see

I checked this a thousand times

Why won’t she believe me?

I know the law, I became an expert

After the English fried my head

Europe was easy.

 

I pleaded right on to the platform

Don’t go, it’s all a ruse please stay

Fear of deportation and embarrassment

I’m right, I’m right, don’t go

Too late. This is what bureaucracy does though

Weakens the soul and destroys the spirit.

 

Go on then, add to the misery of the situation

Alone again, continents apart

Believing that love is a crime, against the law

There’s a form somewhere that tells you

Who you can love, where you can live

And here’s me thinking it was a democracy!

 

Tears and all the usual emotions, I’m hardened

The TGV eats her up like a giant vacuum cleaner

Now I’m standing alone in France again

Trying to remember who sang that

Lost in France eighties hit. F**k this, who cares anyway?

 

Tears and anger on the lonely drive back home

Five empty bedrooms and an office full of Euro-trash paperwork

Don’t torture yourself man, it’s not your fault

Three nations of bureaucrats against you

How could you win, at least you tried.

 

Two bottles of Brittany Cider, that’ll do it

Great stuff when you’re feeling sorry

Drank quickly, I get equally happy and morose

My French mobile rings. Who could it be now? (Men at work?)

 

Confirmation from Bureaucracy land,

I was right all the time, B******s

The plane has gone, she has gone

It’s all f*****g gone down the plughole

A paperwork bath of bureaucracy.

 

Why do these people derive so much pleasure

Destroying other lives at their leisure?

Oh! It’s just your job is it?

Read Mein Kampf b***h, it was just his job.

 

Back on the platform at Poitier

Exactly ten days later and too much cider

She runs into my arms crying, saying sorry

I try to be cool, but really?

I wanted to scream, why don’t you listen?

 

Poitier Station, or Gare, happy, sad, alive, lonely

Who knows what’s next

One thing’s for sure, it’s always expensive

F*****g bureaucrats never think of that

But why would they?

It’s not in their job description.

 

Got the ‘Carte Sojourn’, got married

Happy as a pig, Innit

So England can piss off

With their racist anti-Russian immigration policy

By the way, I don’t see too many white faces

In the UKVI centers, what’s that all about?

Or can I not say that either?