KS4 POETRY

KEY STAGE 4 POETRY

EXCERPT FROM ‘HOW CAN YOU SLEEP’

As pain glides through my soul My body burns like coal Innocent fragile surrounded my misery and control Beaten by barbarians, bleeding and bruised But still, we carry on; it’s what we do. Nothing is left but lifeless bodies and remains scattered on the annihilated ground.

I yearn for a mother’s soft touch as I long for a father’s pride to keep me from falling. Nothing is the same we can say our family chain is forever broken And I wonder, only wonder Why have they spilled thunder and blood into our land?

© Sameea Shahid Key Stage 4 Poetry

EXCERPT FROM ‘IMMIGRANTS AGAIN’

He’s drenched and dripping in dirt, sweat and rain as he sprints across the lawn, boots squelching through the mud. The crowd roars the anthem with joviality and joy. It calls its citizens to arms. He’s French.

She’s draped in cerise ceremonial robes that are trimmed with gold, when she addresses the crowd with eloquent encouragement. Her name is butchered with a clear confidence But they insist this with pride: she’s American.

But when I sit with my coin-coloured braids, Talking to family in our tongue and our slang, We’re followed by worn faces with disdain and disgust And told to go home. We’re Nigerian.

And when he goes home after losing, dejected, on the Metro, It’s not the uniform and the mistake drink-dazed men see But the bristly beard that brushes the ground five times a day, Painting him as a target. He’s Moroccan.

And when she begs for a system that’ll save her family from being pushed by plane from the only home they know They hear her soft Spanish lilt and are filled with rage At these ‘country-thieves’. She’s Honduran.

When we’re succeeding, we’re one of them, but when we aren’t, we’re immigrants again.

© Ameerah Abike Kola-Olukotun Key Stage 4 Poetry

PALACE WALLS

Collapsed balancing palace walls, Render a shield, Concealing all pledges, vows overheard By these perished walls, Like flesh that sits silently on Battered land as a showpiece, These palace walls live as a site of attraction too, The pride and honor, Are these great sloping palace walls. The pride and honor of Great Britain after all, People travel, yearn, and long to see the skin Of these great palace walls, Why not invite them to see what’s enclosed within this Crafty wretched, spectacle? Assembled by the bitten paw of a serf. Manufactured. Filled with echoes and voices of those unaccounted, And it exists as a standing ovation For those exploited men who Fought for the owner of these palace walls, Our Great Great palace walls.

© Aarzoo T Khan Key Stage 4 Poetry

EXCERPT FROM ‘THE EXTRACT’

It’s full of Jade and Beryl and Eucalyptus, the kind of things you’d expect to see at the back of soap and shampoo bottles, the kind of things you read about in one of those glossy magazines from the convenience store. I’ll close the hardback, watch the pages ripple as they fold over one another, close; latch, and press the crumbling spine against the warmth of my lips, sipping in little lungfuls of loveliness; then I’ll gather the letters up and with them in my palm, I’ll look down, down, and etch the letters in, fold them gently over the curve of my beating heart. Then I’ll wake in the dead of night in a cold, cold sweat with the half-sentences still drifting lazily in the back of my mind like the dandelion does through the air. Lullaby.

© Nabiha Ali Key Stage 4 Poetry

EXCERPT FROM ‘THE LOST PIECE’

The red scars in the morning sky Bleed ceaselessly, Their droplets outnumbering Death`s history.

The women and children Cry wearisomely, Each tear drying meticulously, Until only a breath remains, Praying: when will this end?

The Ones in power smile benevolently At the plight of those who cry abundantly. I ask myself today, asking “Where is the essence of humanity?”

Smoke clouds form from the Eastern End “What golden dreams will they hope to achieve If they arrive at the Western End?”

A Brighter Future they are promised, By Older Generations, As they risk their lives For the unknown-

© Tayyibah Latif Key Stage 4 Poetry