It seems so innocuous the first few times,
An innocence and an unknowing. It's fine.
"But, I mean, where is your FAMILY from?"
Sure. And I'll explain: that is complicated.

My patience wears out pretty fast nowadays
So I try to bite back all the bitterness
When faced with the expectant empathy
A vivisectionist might spare the dead.
So I dissect myself with a practiced ease:

My mother came from Guyana, a bounty land
She fled so long ago. I never ask her why.
My father wasn't much of one. We don't talk.
Me? I'm from the most hated place on this Earth:
New Jersey. They always seem to expect that.

A simple answer for a simple question,
And I know they only asked because they meant
"How come you don't look like me, so tall and dark?"
And I'd smile if they were honest about it.

My parents...
are immigrants
Yet, why is it I,
so strongly
reject
their once,
homeland?
...
Perhaps,
the cause
it rooted at
my dad's cynical
comments
and critics
...
Perhaps,
it's my own visits
stifling relatives
horrible traffic
definitely
less, comfortable
...
Maybe,
it's the rejection
of such a gripping
religion
when I myself,
am an atheist
...
Maybe it's
the stereotypes
Chaining me
enclosing me
irritating me
...
...
...
Whatever the case,
it's there

I can be whoever I want to be
what-blood-crap?

Go far back enough,
and we're all related

The only links I have,
are my visits
and influence
of my parents
who once lived there
...
It's not a bad place...
at all...
...
That's not the problem
...
Is there one even?
...
...
...
I,
can be
who
I want
to
be

Emilee, her memory
The child within her television tv
The last standing immigrant of Chile
And a standstill on the blooming lilies
Flowers don't sprout in the withering hot
And babies are mourned when the cradle drops
Water is set free, along with the husbands
Someone, dear god, allow us to keep this bun in the oven

People move
in fear,
migrating from
the dangerous militia
chasing them
with death’s gleam
in their eyes,
fathers carry
their daughter,
mothers urge
their sons
to move on
as miles pass.

Strangers
and
family members
are tightly packed
and stacked on top
of one another
as a world of choppy water
moves them forward
to a harbor they hope
is safer than the home
that they ran from.

Thin tired faces
hungry and anxious
hoping to escape this
nightmare,
easily inches from death,
move to march
across soft lands
and desert sands
seeking something
us soft bellied
cheeseburger
loving sedentary
men and woman
could not comprehend.

I hear the horrible hate speech
screeching out at me,
beer bellies bulging dangerously
with prechewed stupidity
denying the humanity
of these struggling human beings.
Tears of strained patience
crease my age lined face
as I try to explain
the reality of another being
who is suffering.

My peers do not hear me
instead they promote fear greedily,
But I see some strangers
holding up signs of love
speaking the same truth
that I eschew
to show all of you
that refugees do not walk
without a reason,
and we have enough resources
to be decent human beings.

American dreamer.
Southern border divide,
holding me back.
A new hope,
I dream to seek.
An escape from the land I once knew,
A place that just isn't meant for me.

Strange views,
The mainland holds.
Keeping me from something new.
I promise I'm not here to take anything from you.
I understand laws.
I understand policies.
But I'll give you anything for a hand.

Strange views.
Your word doesn't match your action.
How terrible for my copper skin brothers and sisters.
Not a chance for them to live.
Not a change for them to believe in a new.
So take our land
and take our food.
Take our love
and our culture.
But leave us in cages left to rust.

Strange views
of babies in tears
and the smell of fear
coming from grieving mothers and fathers.
As their babies are now out of sight,
separated.
What a strange view to see.
Why does this seem so familiar to me?

Stubborness is the reason for all woes;
the unwillingness to speak and to listen
makes all problems continue and grow,
harder to fix, pain deeper, unforgotten.

Lack of communicaion is a constant of my culture;
A wall between generations written in my future
before I was born, before they met each other,
before ideas of my existence

One generation, my present, cannot forget this “negligence”,
be it conscious or not, because my beliefs, my feelings, my being are built over this foundation of lies that I grew up knowing to be truth, to be reasons for which I acted as I did

Hideous.
unworthy of this Earth.


Just yesterday I was made aware about others’ pain.
Although leading to different understandings and results, same
As what they made me live.

Paranoia, worthlessness, littleness
All of which I’ve felt before, I could finally see
that she too, was broken, something amiss.

I felt a deep connection; understanding, a new feeling
Understanding of why she acted as she did,
hard, unyielding.
But yet, never could I forget my own past,
nightmares and fears that still last;

And I question my place here,
I question my future, near
I question everything she asks of me,
every “question” she does not expect an answer for
every question that ruins me that much more.

Down down down under the sea
There, right there, amongst the waters and the sands
A mermaid of unimaginable beauty fled her homeland

An eye for an eye, heart for heart, two lovers wouldn't be torn apart
To join a man above the waves, a precious treasure, she gave
This impossible trade the mermaid made?
She gave her tongue for legs so she might walk by his side
In a world with words she couldn't speak, lived the mute bride

~~~

She lived with bubbles beneath her tongue
and the sound of ocean in her ears
And yet, despite her rightful bloodline
A desert is where she'd spent her years

The hair of a siren, with a voice like their song
but the legs of a woman.. it was wrong, so wrong
Her exotic, other-wordly looks, a sailor boy found striking
And his familiar scent of salty breeze gave her a liking


Trailing calloused fingers through silky siren strands
The sailor murmurs to his lover, "What would you do for me?"

"I would leave my homeland"


The tang on his skin of a home she's never seen, erase her troubles
Giggling sweetly, she asks him, "And for me, my sweet, love?"

He could pop her bubbles