Wars and storms and refugees
Spoken together ring like a bell
Wars and storms and refugees
Portray the people who now live in Hell
Wars and storms and refugees
Is this the ending of the world
Wars and storms and refugees
Flying the banners of death unfurled
Wars and storms and refugees
Is no solution to be found
Wars and storms and refugees
Or will we hear the trumpets sound
Wars and storms and refugees
War and storms **** refugees
And bring the world down to its knees.
ljm

Here's a few legitimate refugees:
political, poverty, drought, war, and religious.
They're right in the top drawer zone,
But who gives a flying Whoopi
That Miley will claim assylum in Bali Bali;
Or Rosie will fly over camps on her way to Switzerland.
I hope Cher,
Doesn't apply for residence on Cape Breton Island:
We don't want you, Babe.
These are the celebrity refugees,
Bailing out on the touted
Greatest Democracy on the planet.
****, if you don't like what you elect,
Look to history,
Stove pipe hats,
And the wonders to be achieved
Before the end of this decade.
They got enough cash for space,
For Mars!

From a tent to another, I move.
It’s raining,
and sometimes, snowing.
It doesn’t matter how cold it is,
because I am cold.
I have only one blanket,
when I sleep,
one sweaters,
when I move from a tent to another,
under rain,
and sometimes snow.

Wait! I am day-dreaming.
I don’t live in a tent anymore.
I live in a makeshift home.
I have more blankets.
I have more sweaters.
My life is better,
but I still feel cold.

I look out from the dusty window,
that looks like those in jails,
in my room I share with my brother.
It’s sunny outside!
It’s hot!
but why am I cold?

I am still looking outside from the same window.
More makeshift houses appear,
all around,
“Our refugees’ rights?”
written in Arabic, I read on the walls around.
By then, I realized I am still called a refuge.

I saw people marching,
holding banners,
asking for human rights,
holding Palestinian flags,
and wearing the Kofeya.
I realized I am still a refuge.
I see people,
forced to leave their homeland,
to another,
where they live with no rights,
to have jobs,
to build houses.

I see kids,
looking at the protesters,
not knowing what they are looking at,
but I know they realize that,
they are still refugees,
in a neighbouring country,
oppressed and cold.

Mohammed Arafat
03-08-2019

Upon a huge, lush garden,
on a cold autumn day...
various leaves fall, in sweet surrender...
some still rise and go with the forceful wind
floating...along with dreams, wishes and prayers
murmured in the air...uttered fervently
...from near......or faraway places
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

papers, leaves, souls, sighs, and whispers
all circulate, dance in the air...blending with nature
like drifters...and seekers, far from their homes
their habitats...their comfort zones,
suspended, in the atmosphere of every season
...yielding...to the will of the wind,
...while the wind obeys...the will of God
they swirl...land, on new destinations
face new dimensions...
friendlier seas...no more running, just waiting,
while winds of change settle down
touching new base, new grass,
hoping, for a peaceful existence,
for some....the end of life's turbulent journey
..........on safe...tranquil grounds...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

somewhere near, or far...huge gardens exist
where leaves fall, where some rise again,
where new beginnngs, new lives are offered...
havens that welcome and accommodate
...refugees...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sally


Co­pyright August 27, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
      around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
      America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
      was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two children
have replacement value. In China is it each couple or each adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
      grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.

WE ARE ALL REFUGEES    2

We're not laughing when we're born
Or when we die,
We mourn and we cry
When we're born and when we die,
Yes, we mourn and we cry,
When we're born and when we die

We are all refugees running across  the Sea.
Everyone is running,
You, and me,
Trying to find a place
That's safe, and secure,
Where the air and the  water
And the people are pure,  

We keep on running away,
From every thing that causes pain,
Yes, we keep on running away,
From every thing that causes pain

We're not laughing when we're born
Or when we die,
We mourn and we cry
When we're born and when we die,
Yes, we mourn and we cry,
When we're born and when we die

In between we laugh a lot,
Sitting in the sand
By the sea of reality,
Surfing waves when they come,
One by one,  when they come,
On the sea of reality..
Every day we play,
And we surf on the waves,
In the Sea Of Reality.

On the beach, as we go, we should know,
Underneath there's an  undertow.  
On the sea, as we go, we should know,
Underneath, there's an undertow.
Down below, an undertow,
We should know.  

Sean Hunt
Windermere January 7th 2016

1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.

None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.

Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.

They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.

I.
Time passes, another
batch of refugees and migrants. Cities turn into
new houses of gambling and vicious cycles.
Some say only machines can speak clearly
and most humans have lost what they have earned
throughout all this time, just right on schedule.

To own our language,
and the relationships it sets into motion,
we learn painfully, repeatedly like sunrise
and sunsets.
Claiming our own spaces and demons
hidden in our conveniences and reflex routines,
and learning the tricks that has kept peoples
from fully healing from broken promises
and betrayals throughout time.

We own up to our language and its demons
every day and night that we toss and turn
into something feasible, edible, livable.


II.
Iba ibang uri ng digma.
duguang kasaysayang binabaong buhay
binubura ang lakas at memorya tulad ng siyudad
ng Songdo sa South Korea na ang ibig sabihin
ay "city with no memory".

Ito din ang isa sa mga modelo para sa New Clark City
na tinatayo sa Luzon. Sa dalawahang mga pamamaraan
ng mga naghahari-harian, nakikibaka ang anakpawis,
nakikibaka ang kamalayan ng pagpapasya at pagwasto
sa mga pagkakamali, na paulit-ulit na sinusubukang
patayin sa iba ibang mukha.

Mula pa sa panahon ng mga lolo at lola noong 1940s
hanggang ngayon, patuloy ang mga pag-eexperimento nila at paggamit ng panlilinlang  at dahas, sa ngalan ng kalusugan, edukasyon at batas, upang ipain ang buhay sarili, lasunin ang lupang kinakain ang sarili. Kung hindi tayo mag-aaral at mag-iingat din, tayo mismo ang papatay sa mga sinisimulan. #

dead bodies floating
in our oceans
from the Asian Pacific
to the Mediterranean

crumpled corpses lying
on our beaches
thousands drowned unknown

overcrowded detention centers
not unlike concentration camps
behind barbed wires
guarded by police and snarling dogs

nobody feels responsible

not  those who started wars
destroyed whole cities
made millions homeless
and into refugees

not those who take advantage
of the chaos for their own gain
abusing the names of their gods
or some ancient figurehead
to excuse their atrocities and greed

not those who live
in comfortable homes
and wish the desperate crowds
would just stay on the TV screen
and not come close

nor those who pretend
to be the guardians
of our great humanitarian heritage
but show no backbone
against nationalist fanatics

it is the shame of the world
to sit and talk and watch
and not do enough

those who turn away
the needy and homeless
could also
      quite suddenly
lose their homes

forced to rely
on the kindness of strangers