The mule women

Its a very hard life
For these women
At Melilla a border town where
SPAIN and Morocco are trading
But deep in the heat and despair

At five am every morning
The women queue up and await
A pittance for what is just slavery
That seemingly doesnt abate
With families to care for and
House rent to pay
And no help from government
The only way
Is to act as a mule and carry across
Bales of whatever
For the women a loss
Of dignity truly and packages weigh
Up to sixty kilos too much I should say

But the need is to earn
And to earn they must slave
TO buy food to pay debts
And also to save
The boxes are heavy
Cutting into their backs
Resigned to this torture
Even heavier packs
Sometimes they carry
Watching them they
Are really mule women
Who earn little pay

Their faces are lined
They lack hope one can see
Wringing their hands
Unpropitiously
And its every day
No let up at all
Poor women that really
Have to just haul
Many illiterate
Rolled up bales
Some would be better
Just Rotting in gaols

The violence of the inner soul
The perils of s life times role
A lesser valued symphony
Lost in a timeless bid to be
Accepted in this day and age
Worthy of a proper wage
Mules kickoff on sanity
The EU and depravity
Spirit sucked out of the soul
Furthering some far off goal

Enslaved by circumstance to be
Anything but actually
Feminine and clad in sweat
Taut of muscle few will let
Their valour show as much as they
Who work as mules to save each day
Women the true feminine
Not feminised who spoke of sin
Against them on the road to hell
For a measly wage and a lengthy spell

Fighting just to maintain life
Alongside what is pock marked strife
Hoping for s place of worth
In the gutter now of earth
Angels in another life
Cloaked in sweat and utter strife
To feed the family with ones nerve
In the squalor to preserve
Able just about to see
A path out of insanity

No case for celebration Though
Muscled aching the too snd fro
Illuminated in the need
To rest a while perhaps to bleed
Inside racked up with taut and flow
Cramp and ache and fatigue and blow
Old skateboards just to relieve the weight
Duty free luggage at any rate
20 or 30 euros earned
But no one who knows them is concerned

300 euro’s a month maybe
But their rent is high and occasionally
A hand out of food from a local man
They wait and they wait
Its all part of the plan
For sixteeen years she’s been doing this stint
Its exploitation for most are skint
Early morning they must be there
In the line to try and share
What work is coming what bales they get
With the hopelessness of eternal debt

Abandoned in fact by society
The EU’s impropriety
Reoresentatives fortunes high
But these poor women
Their wish to try
And make ends meet
They dont want a lot
Children to be fed and clothed
They are not
Able to fight for bandouts they
Can work their butts off
Or go away

And each is responsible
Every one
When each wretched day is done
To try and manage
To try and be
Smugglers for all to see
In many ways its vulgarity
Unseemliness an obscenity
Flaunting and shameless in this day and age
Indecorous and off the page
My heart is with them
Its churlish and crude
An unprepossessing mousy brood

But these are women everyone
Fading beauty in the sun
Wry of face forbidding they
Have more crows feet than the crows today
Shapeless formless dumpy squat
Disfigured by the life they have got
The boredom and the tediousness
The monotony and constant stress
The daily round its a constant rut
Aching backs and a aching gut

This poem badly upset me I have to say
And its happening in SPain right now
And these are women with families to look after
Who must slave or die