#cultural
I note twenty-three lakh thirty-three corpses and fall asleep.
Waking up in the morning I hear India has become a vast ocean of one billion corpses!
So many corpses in one night!
Hawker while hawking
the newspaper man’s corpse on my floor
that guy came to deliver the paper
right there became a corpse!
Here corpse, there corpse
everywhere corpse
in houses or in buses
in parks or in restaurants
corpse corpse and corpse
from mosque to temple
behind garden houses
under tree shade or on green grass!
In the universities there is no living student, all are corpses
in one night what a terror!
On the roads no peanut seller, all are corpses.
I call the corpses and ask;
didn’t you wear saffron? what is the cause of your death?
why did you die, why did you become a corpse, oh?
my brain got pierced by Shiva’s trident;
I couldn’t ask anything more,
asking the cause of death— I too have become a corpse!
Jan 13
Jan 13, 2026 at 3:51 PM UTC
tell me of tamales
and of pan-dulce
with savored stares
warm, and lined
with vow,
and flies
I'll tell them
of a place
less known
a budding ranch
of splinter and trail
of citrus sky,
flecked, with rust
I'm told the air
might smell
of pine.
Dec 18, 2025
Dec 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM UTC
Think nothing of water which percolates,
Liquid evaporates.
Such are the forms trapped within themselves,
Meaningless rotes.
By formlessness corporeal,
But with materiality intangible.
Forlorn immolation;
Condensates re-saturate, only different.
Incongruent crystallization;
And they say there is change!
By factors invariant,
But with sums nonconstant.
A laugh is a laugh, verbalized or written -
It's still the same fundamentally.
Tears are tears, dribbled or scribbled -
It's still the same in essentiality.
By elements unproposed,
But with totalities nonexistent.
May 23, 2025
May 23, 2025 at 2:49 AM UTC
Delineations on wisdom
Can be but delineations of ignorance!
Delineations of wisdom
Can be but disfigurations by the ignorant!
Is there a difference?
There is a difference!
Apr 23, 2025
Apr 23, 2025 at 9:15 PM UTC
Specked on the toes
or heals of a plate.
The horse is waiting. You don’t know it —
you should breathe in & out in situations like this.
Situations lead to more of them. You smell like Axe. My breathing hasn’t been consistent
-or monitored enough to know the depths of the soul.
Scroll down or turn the page depending on what era you are in. There is infinity on the back of my hand.
On your other back there is some tension. Taste like sweat. Southeast Asian flavored — not in an overly ****** or fetishized way. You and me are the same.
The other you called me an intruder. I know by nationality — not blood. So, you are partially right.
On the other side, you get a massage. We’ve taken turns with other versions of ourselves. Plenty of work in the 21st Century.
A job. Updated resume. For someone who might love you in that moment. Truly love that job. On the back of your real back.
A hand job. Not a quickie. We work. Free labor. We use our hands to make things. All jobs are hand jobs — don’t be a pervert. I thought you were a nice person. Don’t sexualize everything? What job isn’t a hand job?
Why is it so hard? Why is it so big? Why do I have expectations?
We met at a mall. Or you picked me up. My feelings are present. Your feelings back there. You and me are scared. Because jobs that are tiring can be scary.
I miss all of you. You’re back and my back. My stupidity and my wisdom is yours too. The back seat smells like SafeGuard. Breathe in. Brea- Calm. No more scared.
You just ate. That’s how we flirt in the Philippines.
I had black pepper on my foods because it’s used on the front of a dish where I’m from-
When I eat, I don’t burp from the back. You sprinkle the front of the food on its back.
On the front of the back of the phone is an anticipation.
People I know of back home are dying. There is black pepper. No one I have been really close to has passed yet. In the back of your mind you know it’ll happen.
I back up a bit from the table and you. I always think I am smart. I always think of crying when I get home. But I am too smart to cry in public.
Back up — back up. Black up. Sprinkle Black Pepper on food. For you. Backed by support from followers like you.
You may be familiar with my back. Or vice versa. What a beautiful time it is to eat Black Pepper in September!
Wondering what is going on in the back of their minds. You tell me to get over it.
Try the Black Pepper in a town near you. Sides go great with a little back back dash of the Black Pepper. Yes I am ok.
You need salt. I need salt. Back away. Because moderation. Just use Black Pepper. It is your job.
Black. Then front. Top it off. Then back and black. Self love advice — taking everything with a grain of (bath) salt.
Which Black Pepper is the best Black Pepper?
Back and Black. Duh.
Forward through the congestion of Cebu City — I back up but not enough. My new job is to sprinkle the Black Pepper on us. After the commute.
Crazy?
You’re crazy, babe.
You…
Baby, I know I am crazy.
Sike.
You bet.
Because of the motorcycle makes me feel dangerous and cool on your back. I drove too. Danger. You. Never mind! Never. Mind. Men are dumb. That includes me.
That means everything men do other men and women they pursue is dumb. Black Pepper takes their mind off that front and back to the front. People are dumb. Di ba?
Black Pepper is Black Pepper. Nothing but Black Pepper. I love me so much. You too. You told me to love myself more. So I ate Black Pepper.
You aren’t always looking at palm trees, or nature, like I do. Back on your phone. Black pepper grounds the tree.
Now from the back to the other back I calmly sneeze.
Where has life taken you in regards to others? The backs of theirs.
It is not hard to believe in the world of form — because Black Peppers are on my back.
So is the back of your motorbike. I smell Black Pepper on my upper lip. There is Black Pepper sprinkles. Everywhere. I use the back of my wet hand to wipe the back. You wipe the front.
— in the back of my mind, I’m glad most of the Black Pepper is covered by my clothes.
Sleeping on back back — exhale. Exhaling from both the nostrils. I remember the time I garnished a dish with Black Pepper in the Upper East Side. I felt gross. I remember that moment in the back of my mind.
How could anyone hate you if you’re back?
Black Pepper eaters never seem to care too much. So you — don’t back up that with a fact check. Back up. I am not crazy.
I love the blacks. I love the peppers. If you back the love too — it’s a job. You too will know love from the back.
— Sprinkled with black pepper and backed by gold.
Mar 20, 2025
Mar 20, 2025 at 1:50 AM UTC
From the minute you blast off,
You get blasted off
From this plane of existence.
Try to run,
We've already fixed the coordinates
And we're coming for the restoration.
Try to hide,
You will find no refugee
Under any rock or in any log.
The lock's come off,
Here comes Pandora!
Feb 15, 2025
Feb 15, 2025 at 2:43 AM UTC
Dabble in travel duel citizen?
Come from the land of elims?
Most are not from Rome or Turin,
Berlin or Bavaria-
Most don't speak Italian or German.
Likewise with Russian, Mandarin,
Arabic, the King's English, Hebrew.
No winding Rhine,
No rushing Niagara,
No swelling Yellow River.
All the ponds & gulfs left behind
Like Aden, Bothnia, Carpentaria.
No more Urals, no more Himalayas,
No Alps, no Andes,
No Atlas, no Pyrenees.
No more blackcurrants,
Going without papaya.
Put back that whiskey,
Send back that bourbon.
No more Jarlsberg cheese,
No more bottles of champagne.
Cut out the list of avocado,
No more palm or olive oils extra virign.
No more fancy foreign fruits,
No more spoiled rotten vegetables.
Right?
This is nationalism
As it's being directed,
You'll get to watch the film.
I'm sure it'll be inaccurate,
But I doubt it.
Feb 14, 2025
Feb 14, 2025 at 10:38 PM UTC
Here is a list of things that are bigger,
greater than all of the world's oceans,
bigger than the storms in the seas,
than all the islands in the Pacific,
connecting all of us together,
being one great channel of culture...
Telenovela, chismes, galeones,
teleserye, chismis, galleon.
𝘚𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘪 𝘓𝘢𝘱𝘶-𝘓𝘢𝘱𝘶, 𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘪 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘯.
𝘌𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘥𝘢 𝘯𝘪 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘯? 𝘒𝘢𝘩𝘶𝘭𝘶𝘨𝘢𝘯 𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘯.
Sangría? No, sangre de Magallanes.
𝘕𝘪ñ𝘰𝘴, 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘢 𝘦𝘯 𝘷𝘦𝘻
𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘻𝘢𝘳 𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘰 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴.
And believe it or not;
Bulerías, danza, bachata, habaneras.
How do you like your coffee, bebe?
Con leche? Bueno.
Evaporada and condensada?
Tequila, San Miguel, Mezcal, Corona,
Cerveza, Serbesa, Cerrado, Sarado.
𝘈𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘰 𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘨𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘢,
𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘦𝘭𝘰.
Actually, how do you like your coffee?
𝘛𝘦 𝘨𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘦𝘭 𝘤𝘢𝘧é?
𝘚𝘪 𝘯𝘰, 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘰 𝘲𝘶𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘦𝘥𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘶 𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘰.
So do you like it hot or con hielo?
And of course;
Canciones, c/kanta,
And nowㅡreggateon, budots.
Gasolina? Aserejé? Macarena?
Bad Bunny, being our new Columbus.
Playitas, islas, karagatan, nuestro paraíso.
Mas chismes, mas tazas de cafe.
How do you think we're so far yet so alike?
Of all these things? Con chisme? Claro.
So which one first? The juiciest or latest?
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 at 4:20 AM UTC
I am from the apartments, from sharing a room and living cramped
I am from the loud arguments, the bitter taste in my mouth
I am from the cactus, its’ prickly thorns attached
the dark rose, its’ petals slowly wilting
I am from eating dinner together and a loud volume
From John and Sonia and Gloria
I am from the stress and expectations
From not letting it get to you and ignoring it
I am from self taught Christianity, and talks with God at night
I’m from Portugal, Venezuela, and Columbia
Cheese Bread and Empanadas
From the forklift accident, the recovery, and the epileptic Grandma
I am from the strength of the women in my family
I am from the stacks of paperwork
I am from a course of self-discovery and awareness
I am from the first generations journey to succes
Aug 27, 2023
Aug 27, 2023 at 11:34 AM UTC
cultural burnout, the hurt bubbling up
cannot put a lid on it any longer
the feelings keep getting stronger
my muscles ache, my brain is dazed
cultural burnout, the days slip away
the workweek is all I know
I barely ever leave my home
no escape, no break
inside the cage, this lake
Feb 17, 2022
Feb 17, 2022 at 1:33 PM UTC
The east side
The drug pushers
Pimps
And hoes
The ***** alleys ways
Grass growing up through every single nook
Crevice
And crack of the imagination
The east side
How I love you
Only there I can see a homeless black ******
Gingerly crossing the street
Only there do I see men walking
Holding their beers
Wrapped up in brown paper bags
Where the Latina girls wear large hoop earrings
Dark make-up and hair
The black girls with their red lipstick
The east side
Smelling of dirt and ****
The internal engine of the city
The cracked houses
The homeless riding electric wheelchairs in the middle of the street
The tagged walls
The abandoned houses
The sign throwing
The shootings
The stabbings
The killings
The east side
Don’t ever change
I need you
Apr 6, 2020
Apr 6, 2020 at 9:38 PM UTC
Does our Hello-Poetry website
enable poets
from all around the world
to read each other’s poetry
and develop cross-cultural understanding
thereby facilitating global peace?
Jul 27, 2019
Jul 27, 2019 at 3:43 AM UTC
I don't mind when white people wear
cat ears.
seifuku.
kimono.
kanji slapped on shirts.
(even if they don't know what it means)
Culture can be an aesthetic.
Just as long as they appreciate it,
We're friends.
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 7:14 PM UTC
I think love is what we need in the world.
We needed it so badly we created it. Then we fought over it. And we corrupted it. It even became a disease. Until we found it had a medicinal effect. It could heal.
Love seeps into the ground where we bury it. The decay leaves traces of it. So is love also in death? Love is powerful indeed.
If love can find its way in life and death, it must not be mortal like us. Perhaps we can call it Divine. It must be what we see when we look up to the sky.
That’s why we describe it in so many ways. It flows like the blood in our veins. And when we no longer have the strength in our heart, it becomes the soul of our own.
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019 at 5:13 AM UTC
It is not wrong to be white
and to have dreadlocks
Though,
you may look like a pleb
but you offend me not
Nor would it offend
a black rastafarian man
of a temperate manner
I don't know any women
with white skin and
straight hair that get offended
by afro-caribbean women
wearing a straight weave
You're all just too soft now,
you're all just pet peaves
Stop getting offended
on behalf of other people
that don't even take offence
Excuse me,
whilst I build a fence
around myself hombre
Not to keep me here
but to keep you at bay
Cultural appropriation
doesn't exist
Cultural misappropriation
doesn't exist
You're all just
champagne socialists
You should get over it
Yes, you mate
The one that thinks
he's above
everyone
and must decide what is
politically correct
and whose life matters
In the end all this is
is a series of cultural
exchanges and we're
all wading through ****
Face it.
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 8:16 PM UTC
A city abroad. A long way from home. New country to new home.
And the universe gave birth to the one body a second time.
These pavements have never been walked upon by the little feet of Vietnam.
Pavements walked by many; yet the feeling is so refreshing.
A Street she will never walk down, decisions she will never make.
As irrelevant as it may seem, no matter how pointless our existence may be.
A human can wonder, and wander.
A human. That is all I am, and that is all I will be.
Nothing we do makes a difference in the great scheme of things.
As we are a speck in the history of a universe that is billions of years old
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 7:59 PM UTC
I'm the bridge connecting them together,
Two different strains of Indian culture,
And I am doing justice to my mother,
As well as I am doing it to my father.
And I am so linking north with south,
Two different styles of parenting couth,
I'm the son of 2 strains of Indian culture.
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 5:05 AM UTC
If one pulls
A sheep astray
The flock is sure
To move that way.
To fish in a troubled water
De-constructing history
Thwart we could
The old social fabric of unity
And create we shall
A generation
Suffering a crisis of identity!
*“Ask me not why
They are better than
My peers and I
Also sensitize me not to deny,
What I see with my naked eye!
In attire,grooving,life style ,
Cosmetic application and civilization
They galvanize youth's attention!”*
Come up with a generation
We shall
That does not bat an eye
Our dictates to buy,
A generation that does barter
An age-old culture
With fads,for such a venture
Proves to it an adventure.
To achieve what we terribly sought
If we use somebody of note
Fame that has got
Say an artist or a poet
The mob will not
Fight-shy to drink a lot
From our poison ***
Without a grain of salt
“God doesn't exist "
Could be top on the list!
Alas, we could say “Worship us!"
*"Forget the Key And Lock theory!
Why should you worry?"*
Or social and religious norms
We could rock
With *“A lock could lock a lock
even in a wedlock!”*
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 10:05 AM UTC
No one born too far from Niedersachsen, said Oma,
ever quite captures their sing-song intonation.
Characterized by subtleties, like an umlauted vowel,
all non-native imitations sound inevitably as ******
as would a cry of “ello, guv’nah!” in a London coffee shop.
Her Plattdeutsch instincts neutered
by decades abroad, married to a son of Milwaukee,
her permanent, dormant longing for Salzgitter awakes only
to trigger hunger pangs of irreconcilable nostalgia
at the passing whiff of a Germantown bakery.
She taught me the word “sehnsucht” over lukewarm coffee
and a pause in our conversation: a compound word
that no well-intentioned English translation
could render faithfully.
It isn’t the same as just longing, she sighed— longing is curable.
Sehnsucht holds the fragments
of an imperfect world and laments
that they are patternless. How the soul
yearns vaguely for a home
remembered only in the residual ache
of incomplete childhood fancies;
futile as the ruins
of an ancient, annihilated people.
How life’s staccato joys soothe
a heart sore from the world,
yet the existential hunger, gnawing
from the malnourished stomach
of the bruised human psyche, remains—
insatiable, eternal.
Long enough ago, a reasonably-priced bus ride away
from the red-roofed apartment in which she babbled her first words,
a kindly old man in a pharmacy asked her
about her peculiar, exotic accent. Once inevitably prompted
with the question of where she was from, she responded only
that she was a tourist off the beaten track.
And when I pointed out, to my immediate regret,
that she gets the same question back here in Ohio,
I realized then that, not once, has she ever referred to the way
the people of her pined-for hometown spoke
as though she had ever belonged to it.
Sep 29, 2015
Sep 29, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
The first word in Arabic
You ever taught me
Was Aoheb:
Love,
Spelled G-I-V-E
The kind that
I forgot what I was
When I felt you holding me.
But only privately.
Like crossing the street,
We look both ways
Before our hands meet.
Because even though
it's okay for me
Culturally..
We don't do that
Until we're married.
But just like
The next words
You taught me,
Ana fahemt:
I understand.
Like that time
I called you a beautiful Woman..
You got so mad because
You want to stay a girl forever.
Baby,
I never
Want to grow up
Together
I want to grow in.
So give me a garden
To come home to
Give me a heart
I can roam through
When it's 3AM
And both of us
Have **** to. do.
One day,
When we're tired
Of learning each other's language
You can call me Frankie,
And frankly,
I'll fly you to the moon.
Give my very breath to you
I'll keep you so warm
In my arms that baby,
Your blood will boil.
And I don't mean to spoil the fun
But could you please put that
Super cute face of yours away?
Because
Your smile,
Is so bright
Solar radiation
Needs sunglasses.
And even though
You're sweet as molasses
I don't think that Nasa's
Satellites can handle that
Amount of sunshine right now.
I think
"Ana bufuker."
...really? .. "Ana buhfucker?..
Whatever.. Ana bafaker:
I think,
Google translate is awful.
Especially when it involves
Conversations with your
Your dad and me
Because honestly
I always think I'm gonna
Say the wrong thing
At the wrong time.
And I always just end up
Saying the wrong thing
at the wrong time.
But somehow you always
Seem to know how to
read my mind.
So
Habiby. Aomry. Hayaty.
My love, My life, My age...
...And the rest of the poem is none of your business.
Truly. It's between that girl and I.
But I will say this though:
We don't talk much anymore
And I'm not really sure why.
But I know that
Somewhere out there,
In-between all of the ********
Of our daily lives;
There is a girl that
Is going to speak my language.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC