You Call Me Refugee

You call me refugee?
I served your meals
washed your clothes
lotioned your babies heels.

And with them pennies
I bought myself a house.
My floors as clean as yours
you know I aint no louse.

You call me refugee?
I didn't make that dam spill
water ran over the city
just like it had its own will.

That water washed away my house
aint no money for me to run.
You left three days 'fore the storm
totting your suitcase and a gun.

How can you call me refugee
cause I got stuck in the city.
No food, couldn't afford gasoline
and you look at me with pity.

You danced to my music
shuffled in and bought me a drink
but when that storm bout to come
you gone quick as a wink.

Now you casll me refugee
cause I got sent up north.
All I owned wiped out, gone
gotta make a  new start.

Pardon me, but I aint no refugee
I washed and scrubbed floors.
Believed in working. I'm free
from seas to the other shores.

My belly hungers,I'm thirsty still
call me what you like or see
but don't you dare label me
anything like a new refugee.

This here land we share
or so I thought we did.
You upped and gone
or maybe you just hid.

A state line is not a border
nor a place to hide from me.
I crossed them lines too
yet you call me refugee.

I wonder everyday now
and pray you'll someday see.
I spent my whole life working
so why you call me refugee?

Written from the words of my Aunt Evelyn. An 80+ year

old  displaced resident from the horrors of the hurricane

and ruptured levee. Tho she has lost  everything one of

her most disgusting feelings is that she is being called a

refugee in her own country.

Del Cano 2005 Sept