Inclusion Poem by Raj Arumugam

Why don't you talk to me and tell me off
straight to my face? Tell me I'm not good enough
for you. Tell me my credentials don't configure
with your system; you don't know what to do with me.
But you can't tell me that, can you?
(You can't tell me anything
but read me sections and clauses of the manual.)

Who is to say the word?
For like all ugly systems
yours too is inclusive
and so the possibilities are left open
and so inclusion becomes exclusion
and the possibility becomes the impossibility.
You just hold out hope
and though you do not deceive,
you effect deception.

And who is to say the word?
There is certification and registration
and there is rank and order
of inclusion and possibility.
There is the system.
And there is exclusion.




(from The Migrant - notes of a newcomer (February 1997- July 1998))