Do You Have Your Papers? Poem by david lessard

You cannot be here without your papers,
You are brown and you must have I.D.;
You cannot speak with an accent,
Then they'd know you were illegal, don't you see?

You cannot speak your your language,
In this land, an English speaking world;
They'd suspect you were an alien,
And insults at you they'd hurl.

Color is a giveaway, white is quite okay,
You can have a tan, but brown you cannot be;
You can be a light, light shade of something,
But not brown and not permanently.

Guess what? We have to carry papers too,
When we visit your old homeland;
We have to have a passport now,
If we don't have ID, why then, we would be canned!

That's what separates a state, or in this case, a country,
We must follow rule and regulations, to our dismay;
When in Rome, do as the Romans do,
Otherwise, you'd better pray!

Pray that you don't get stopped,
For being white or brown;
Pray that you have papers,
Or get out of this town!