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Janine Jacobs Apr 10
When I look up at my ancestors and the struggles of my family tree
I realised I was made from bleeding hands and shattered hope
Pouring their lives from cup to cup, generation to generation
All the things they couldn’t be
I was made by them but also for them
Passing down onto me their tears and  hardships, and all their untold stories
You see, they chose me
To uphold their legacy, unravel their truth
Breath the air and smell the soil of places they could never see
I was made to be everything they weren’t allowed to dream
My path will sooth their pain
I am meant to live loud and carry their sacrifices as my war cry
Rone Selim Jan 28
O’ country of my blood,
country of my ancestors
I long for you
Your luscious green landscapes
and your highest mountains
Your beautiful waterfalls
and your fountains
The sound of the neighborhood kids
laughing in the streets,
I long for you

A time where we ran outdoors so excited
we forgot to put our shoes on,
sitting on the front porch buying watermelon from the fruit-cart man,
then sharing it with our friends,
I long for you

Wherever I go I belong to you, one day shall my ashes be scattered and soil with you.
Being displaced as a child and not being able to experience the life lived in my birthplace and homeland.. these are some of the memories I got to experience while my first and last short visit after moving away. 5 years apart.
Now 22 years since the visit.

And 27 years living here as an “outsider” - however I would still be considered as an “outsider” in my homeland too.
irinia Aug 2023
I have ships in my bones they carry me
somewhere else like a misunderstanding cause
the I of the world carries the evening
over the mountains on misterious ways
a nasty habit the imagination
sometimes I wonder if the ancestors are stalking these walls
to see if we can be happy
against the sacrifice of song
cause we die without thinking about it
a little bit every day from this stride
to put everything in its place
inside
irinia Nov 2022
silence was improvising in my eyes
in this tender fog between one moment
and this moment
and I could see the old love approaching
to invade me
to intoxicate me
with its hypnotic violence
this love like a fossilized wood in their gaze
came to visit me
again
with so many faces
so many whispers
it was as if angels had descended
on the barren land and
with their unthought hands
were tenderly carressing
the old bones unsung
what else could have I done
than
open my eyes and dream
the palimpsest of forgotten dreams
forged in the greatest intensity
of all the fleeting moments
in which
they blinked

(I need to shelter my heart from
the silence of decaying leaves
from the violence of life destroying
itself)
I S A A C Oct 2022
feast for the ancestors who were famished
embrace the familiar damage
bisou bisou, thankful for the room
used to be so stuffy in the old place
i left my feelings of inadequacy in my old ways
old space, watch the page turn
displace metaphors about the days turn
is getting older just getting further from my innocent joy?
is getting older just pretending that i feel joy?
a glimpse of it underneath the books that weigh heavy on my brain
trying to understand everything but neglecting vain
trying to fulfill the expectations expected of me
for my ancestors who were famished
i am grateful for the feast
Nigdaw Jun 2022
bathed in light
I can almost touch
it feels alive around me
enveloping
I feel my ancestors fear
and respect
as I capture it
on digital SD card
Ren Sturgis May 2022
Grief.
I hear that word a lot.
A feeling,
grieving,
an action.
It affects us in the deepest parts of our beings;
we push back so hard that it festers and bursts.
I'm grieving and I should be honest about it.
I'm grieving for my ancestors who went through trauma and continued on,
I'm grieving for my kin lost to the same rough waters we swim through now,
I'm grieving for the ongoing traumatizing events we face in everyday life,
I'm grieving for the me I could've been if only I'd been loved as I love myself now,
I'm grieving for the future we're working so hard for,
I'm grieving from this pain I'm burdened with.
Thank you grief.
I'm here to hold you and walk into love with you.
Zoe Mei Sep 2021
Look on me dearly:
your stolen sullied sullen

daughter. I could dig you up
to hold your bones but

want only to wash myself
away, like white foam

from the seashore.
If I burn what is buried,

is it cremation
or disintegration? You would fly

ashes in the wind, like a wish
given

lift, like an altar of lit
incense.

Think of learning of your blood:
yellow skin and rice paddies

and great-great-great-great-granddaddy
grey for the Confederacy.

Do two halves not one whole
soul make? I take

a breath
and leave it

free.
Raven Feels May 2021
DEAR PENPAL PEOPLE, no offense to photography<3---I don't like someone taking my picture:}


unfair for my ancestors and the great greats of the past before

them faces to stay unknown unrecognized in future evermore

call me stupid call me crazy call me insecure

but my veins fear that shoot to endure

eyes perplexed on captured focus

not understanding that optic motion only-in our century a bonus

mind entering a vacant slash

cameras must be abandoned gone illegal in that flash


                                                                       ------ravenfeels
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