There ain’t no black in the Union Jack

To the world
They call themselves 
The United Kingdom 

To their brown subjects 
They called themselves
Great Britain

Once the savages ousted the crown
The Queen said ‘Child, 
Become a part of the Commonwealth’

Though there was not much 
Common in our wealth 
Other than our rich imperial history

And the trauma in a tongue 
We share, named after 
One kingdom on the island 

But that’s all in the past
After all, the prime minister 
Is an Indian from East Africa 

Today “We are all Brits,”
Though some are black
Before they are British

Others are Indian
Before they are British
But that is a simple formality 

For the BAME scheme
To help minorities 
Feel United in this Kingdom

For this is Great Britain 
Though I wonder 
Who exactly here is Great 

In this United Kingdom
There is greatness 
But in division 

Hear the cries for independence
In Scotland and Wales 
“Not economically feasible”

Say the Lords of London
Yet the peace walls in Belfast
Seem to stand for something else

Catholics and protests fighting
Is the matter not deeper 
than the dream of a United Kingdom?

Even in the land of this language
Between the North and South
There is grumbling about inequality 

Of income and opportunities 
Of accents and access
To the blood from London

But who I am to speak?
Just a bastard
Of a dream called Empire

Just a savage 
Who thought this island
Would welcome him home

Our mothers spread their legs
Like Moses the Red Sea
To let their seamen go

That their promiscuity 
Would grant the bastard 
A passport as red their flushed skin 

Battered blue by Brexit
As faithful as Charles’s marriage 
to Dianna, divorced and deceased 

But tories use people
Like us, tokens, to Patel, 
I mean police the boarders 

They want our money 
But not more minorities 
So come one, come all

To sojourn, not abode in
Our foreign home
The disunited kingdom