We don’t know it yet, but our streets are being lined with mutants That’s right, Cyclops, iceman, angel and storm Are reborn, unworn and not yet torn, And they walk between you and me, They sit beside you on the bus and the tube, They man CCTV and fight adversity They guard gas stations, sell us commodities They help us when our dishwashers break And save us when lives are at stake We never thank them – barely acknowledge them Sometimes we even try and fight them And you know, some of us don’t even know they exist Yet they persist, assist and insist On anonymity, secrecy and public decency They don’t inform us that they have different DNA Chromosomes creating new characteristics Flaunting evolution’s logistics Statistics mutating in the face of the future race Imbued with gifts and talents unknown Powers not yet shown They’ve grown into hybrids They all have stomachs made of diamonds Caught in the liminal, still experimental Only first, second or third generation Still nestling into a new location Not yet credited with integration Struggling to lay some sort of foundation I’m not talking x men I’m talking immigration You see our immigrants are superhuman They uprooted, traded their lives and stepped into the shoes of ghosts All for security, for safety, and the myth of no more poverty They sold their soul to Beelzebub for a British passport Now they’re cutting teeth on keys with locks in faraway lands Like spores they were strewn across the world The diaspora And they are mutants Because they are an amalgam of here and there Enacting a marriage of mannerism They keep cellophane on TV remotes And won’t take the plastic off new phones They bear the pain of leaving brothers behind Events that time cannot rewind They watch tackier soap operas And collect call cards like stamps Some of them build empires Some build pyramids Some dwell in wasteland Some lose their grip on it They struggle to say where they’re from on their Facebook profiles And they circle ‘other’ on the NHS race forms They introduced Divali, Hanukah and Eid to Christmas They sat Yom Kipur and Ramadam next to Lent And they gave thanks to God knows who They work twice as hard to be considered half as good And they are the brave ones Where we speak one language they speak two three four Mother-father-brother tongues, Where we only know the sun to set in summer They’ve felt the monsoon’s wrath and the sun’s strength Where we only know skin white as moonshine They know men with eyes the colour of rainbows And lands were women with hips are considered beauties And where we only have one identity They have a plethora, each laid onto the sediment of the last And they’re not called wolverine, Shadowcat or dazzler But Patel, Mohammed and Muller But in this version, there’s no professor Xavier to unite them To nurture and support them He’s not there to prove that these mutants can be superheroes Westchester Mansion is hidden in Bromley, Bradford and Brixton Now ladies and gentlemen we’ve arrived at our trouble Magneto’s brotherhood of Mutants appear out of the rubble They now control our newspapers, Our radio and our publishers They lurk in Parliament’s committee rooms and the City’s Boardrooms They have BBQs with our neighbors and sort out ourtaxes They think evil thoughts, speak poniards and every word stabs They insult our intelligence with their falsities And upset our children with their dualities And I hate myself for saying it but I reckon not even Mr. Cameron can save us now We got into this rut and we don’t know how So fight, though the mutants’ genes are not our own Throw them a bone Let them call this Marvel Universe home And for heaven’s sake, just leave ‘em alone! Cos we are born, we live we die The years keep on flying by And the thought of hating seems so silly when the remedy is educating We created passports, borders and ethnicity We invented race and dichotomy So sit on the tube with your head held high, Realise that that guy by your side Like you looks to the sky Realise that though what he says may be unknown by discriminating You’re alienating one more superhero from the throne