#diaspora
Love built across continents
Identity stretched to its limits
Embracing another culture
Whilst clasping onto the original.
Balancing tradition and family expectations
Sacrificing inner parts of yourself
To meet another's idea of respect.
Age old traditions emerge
Bringing questions to surface
What is, who is, where is, how and why?
The emotional pull extends
Upbringings, identity and freedom.
Invisible cultural assumptions arise
At the moment of disagreement
Bringing excuses and accusations.
Misunderstood pressure bubbles underneath
Bottled up homesickness.
Meanwhile the change embeds itself within
Stuck between, neither here or there.
Home or abroad, love is...
...where the heart is.
6d ago
May 28, 2026 at 7:15 AM UTC
I can feel it now,
that slight breeze
in Montenegro’s orange heat.
I feel the warmth all the way
in my child’s feet.
A child once again,
my friends chase me
around the chicken coop
as I laugh and twirl,
my hair tied in a low ponytail,
just a little farmer’s girl.
Oh, I’d give anything
to walk in my Bika’s old house
with the low ceilings
and white crocheted curtains,
where we once gathered
for the last time
without knowing.
I can feel it now.
My mother calls,
“Time for dinner,”
as Deda walks into the cow stalls.
I run home.
Up the hill we go.
I’d do anything now
to move up those mountains
like we once used to
when we were small.
Bika’s house no longer stands.
May Deda’s grave be weightless.
And I’m no longer a little girl.
Oh, these montenegrin memories.
Feb 24
Feb 24, 2026 at 12:41 AM UTC
The vines do not sprawl.
Early in their lives, they are told where to stop.
Wire, post, distance—nothing survives by accident.
Frost touches the leaves with the care of a verdict.
I walk the rows learning restraint as a language:
measure, patience, adherence. Even the hills agree
excess is unbecoming. What I carry does not speak
here. It is reduced to numbers, to instructions
whispered, to something kept rather than confessed.
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025 at 1:24 AM UTC
The untold woes of the immigrant—the ultimate Argo.
Sometimes you smile a little,
And cry a quarter,
And wonder, “Is everything going to be alright?”
The woes of the immigrant
Sleep in journals unpublished—unwritten—undocumented.
"Adom wo wim" is all one can murmur,
Drawing from deep wells of scripture,
The final parakletos for survival.
"Ego be"—the anthem you learn to sing,
Because all you can think and say is, “It will be well.”
But how is all well
When you’ve just consumed a cup of coffee
And face containers of notifications?
Money for this. I need help with that.
How is all well
When you look starkly at an Argo that set sail—
A stranger to your friends
And an unknown man to your parents?
You smile on WhatsApp calls and FaceTime
And see the cracks—the wrinkles on their faces.
Mother and father are aging
As you stare at the screen.
The wrinkles say, “Your Argo must dock.”
The woes of the immigrant firstborn child—
Never seen, never heard, always present.
Yet the Argo must sail on.
It will change its parts,
But journey on it must—the unhomely Argo,
Friend to none, kin only to the shore.
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 7:44 PM UTC
The Scarlet Refusal
The box. The chains.
The absolution.
“It ends the pain,” they say.
But what is there for me to gain?
My shackles long slipped the rein.
It’s your box, your chain, that detains.
I abandoned that game.
“It sticks,” they say.
“It rebels,” they voice.
A bright red ‘A’.
But no heed I pay.
I light my illuminate blaze.
Not an arsonist—
Just someone who is unlevered.
May 22, 2025
May 22, 2025 at 8:46 AM UTC
there are a few
simple steps
that you must follow
to become diaspora
to become diaspora,
one must first and foremost
be ripped away
from the lands that hold one’s soul
to become diaspora,
is to become (dis)illusioned
with the glitter, glamour
and stolen gold
of the First World
to become diaspora,
one must adhere to passivity
to survive in a crowd
of barred fangs
and white skin
to become diaspora,
one must learn how to speak:
the language of genocide,
the language of disease,
the language of thievery,
the language of war
to become diaspora
is to become one with bloodshed.
to be covered in every drop,
of sweat,
of blood,
of ****
of spit
left behind on the grounds
which we now call
home.
Sep 19, 2024
Sep 19, 2024 at 1:50 PM UTC
Oh, how she calls to me!
My native land, land of highlanders,
and epics of bygone eras
Take me back to those accursed mountains,
and those flatlands where the farmers do produce their yield.
Sep 4, 2024
Sep 4, 2024 at 6:46 PM UTC
The wheel of fortune turns for me,
And always, revolves at its own leisure.
Time is curved where the future will be,
But always flat when it is measured.
The rest is a serpent, in every direction,
Forever consuming the end of its tail.
Self contained death and resurrection,
Superluminal ship, without wind or sail.
Will you safekeep our knowledge when it is done?
Humanity’s worst as well as its best?
Will you mind if it’s turtles, all the way down?
A stable foundation on which to rest?
Where will you fall, at the teeth or the tail?
Destroying or rebuilding anew?
If All is cyclic, then we’ll meet once more,
Eternal versions of me and of you.
Aug 11, 2023
Aug 11, 2023 at 10:18 PM UTC
I am from a dreamland.
My great land was diverse yet so grand as
the food and words were never bland.
The hands were rich with bands and rands,
built from working the same ground upon which we stand.
I am from a home that once spanned
prosperity itself; such a lovely
thing was a gift to our health. The sands,
skies, and seas could even hold the Heavens.
The trees used to dance in the breeze with ease.
I am from a dwelling of past envy,
but not of a hating feeling,
in the purest form, this was just only beauty.
But I am from broken societies.
Our hearts were bled dry
as we were taken overseas.
We prayed, begged, cried why
ever so loudly, but it was in vain.
I am from a place where our veins
still course with a saddened passion,
as a lack of love is our new fashion.
With sorrow, I am still from a life of death,
as their malice has never left.
Yet they still set us so carelessly upon the trees;
despite our screams and pleas, we
become the strangest fruits you have ever seen.
We have no identity and we have no names.
yet they still set us so harshly upon the pyre;
the painful extermination of desire
is a freedomless and killing fire.
Even our look for love is seen as theft,
and sadly, I am from where they even have my last breath.
Mar 30, 2021
Mar 30, 2021 at 12:26 PM UTC
My words are borrowed,
From the tongues of those
Who stole our freedom.
Yet now I use them,
For my expression
In the name of —
Liberation.
Feb 5, 2020
Feb 5, 2020 at 6:52 PM UTC
My Black Black Man
The Walls of your Mind
Beckon only a Unique kind
The Love of a full Woman
An illusioned witness to
the Truth behind You
and your fettered prime, can
Be more black, more diaspora than
thee. Educated with sight
Yet conflicted by societal rite
And a King in every Troubled Stage
Unable to Fight
Can or cannot Love right?
My Black black man.
Oct 7, 2019
Oct 7, 2019 at 5:16 AM UTC
1
a dark, dreary dream it seems-
no fog thicker than it's haze
2
this land is real, it exists-
this place has a sign with its name
3
no map on earth has inked
to draw the arrows to this maze
4
a garden of eternity,
where the rabbits, feral and wolves, tame
5
this place is cloudy,
but each whispy haze weighs a metric tonne
6
the crown on each tree
and their boughs so far up their trunks
7
they form a cloak, impenetrable
that paints it sable against the sun
8
and what little sunlight dies-
in the ebon sea, its flare had sunk
9
there is no light here,
save for an oil-less lamp yet to be lit
10
an ashless bonfire-
wood yet to be gathered and be burnt
11
these pixies have no home
other than the cage one carries them in it
12
these fireflies have no light,
save for what is suffered and learnt
13
the forest makes pub ******
of those who lose themselves there
14
leches of those thirsty
who drink from its streams and creeks
15
they fail and falter and fall on the forest floor,
and the bushes wake back to life and stare
16
these are the sentinels of the forest,
and it is your surrender they seek
17
skulls and rib cages decorate
and hang from the boughs in this forest
18
the beaten trail there is paved
with the bones of the pleasant and their tales
19
the lamps are candles stuffed in the skulls
of the truthful and honest
20
you walk on these and where the bones stop,
you stand on where the last of them failed
21
the night here is neverending,
according to whom have endured
22
when it actually ends,
all memory of its trees and creeks cease
23
each and every soul that stands,
has left footprints here for sure
24
no telling which are the footprints of those,
living, lived, or recently deceased
25
this place is cold,
the clement light drowned out eons ago
26
it's cruel too,
this brumal darkness too tame to **** you
27
it keeps your heart-beating,
pounding down on you with layers of snow
28
it makes you forget the clement light,
makes you forget the warmth your breath once drew
29
how you get there nobody knows,
one wrong step- the forest eats you
30
from the sidewalk, from school to home, into the alleyway,
the forest eats you
31
the door between your room and the living room's screams,
the forest eats you
32
from the covers of your sheet into the noise of the streets,
the forest eats you
33
from the street to an inn, back to the street again,
the forest eats you
34
from the light of screen into the darkness of bed,
the forest eats you
35
from the concave stomachs and a mountain of debt,
the forest eats you
36
the stool between you and a knotted rope,
the forest sill eats you
37
and then, skin hard and frozen cold
since wandering this grove of a thousand broken lights
38
the crown of the trees recede
and the boughs begin to thin towards the opposite pole
39
there is no sun here, other than the immolated torch
of your flesh burning bright
40
there is no sun here,
other than the immolated phlogiston
that combusts at the end of
the dark night of the soul
Aug 25, 2019
Aug 25, 2019 at 6:29 AM UTC
That’s the thing about lived realities
They are not expectations
Nor stereotypes about cultures
They are the opposite of common knowledge
How about we document our life and get rid of these misconceptions?
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 8:26 AM UTC
Allah’s messenger said, ‘Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred less one and he who memorized them all by heart will enter paradise.’ To count something means to know it by heart - Sahi Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 93, Hadith 489
Cook her with Honey, Sweets, Glorious Sugar
Peaches and Hares, Soft Haired Stranger
smells like Tulips, Beloved Roses, Jasmines,
Violets, Blessed Lilies, Lotus Stars and Songbirds
First Born, Second Born, Eighth Born
The Oldest Daughter, Shy and Timid
My Father’s Blessings, My Mother’s Tears
Promise of God, God is My Father
One Who is Alive, a Songbird Fantasy
Person of the Night who Loves the
Beautiful Night Rain, *****
Jezebel’s Daughter, Detesting Witch
she is One Who Can Forsee, Prideful,
Original Sin, Woman of White Magic
Wild As a Mountain Goat
Torch of Light, Light of Mine, Light All Around
watch the Woman with Crown, a Woman of Victory
Truthful Ruler of the House, Ruler with a Spear
Fighting Filled With Wrath, Strong as a Little Bear
Battle Armor From the Land of the Broken
Protector of Sunrise and Nightfall
Fighting a Battle in Winter with
Wisdom and Justice
A Princess Who Has A Heart of Gold
Beauty, A Woman of High Manners
Noble Queen, Radiant Precious Stone
Shining Diamond, Like Smooth Dark Wood
our Possession, our Brand New Home, our Feast
A Reward Given, an Afterthought Charity, Chaste Homemaker
Wealthy Companion, Warm Fire, Compassionate Nurse
Say the Prayers with Heavy Stones
Divine Woman. Universal Woman.
God’s Messenger,
Holiness, Living.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 5:03 PM UTC
Cockroaches peering between the shattered plates scattered once they heard the slap of Shanta’s footsteps up the narrow halls. 5’4 in white socks and brown sandals, she commands the room, her yellow sari, a beacon in the darkening winter days. Mrs Tagore’s radio leaks through paper-thin walls.
Pagla hawar badol diney/ Pagol amar mon jegey othey
Out the **** elevator, she glides above dull linoleum floors to her two room cardboard box. Salina’s neon pink birthday banner hangs on, cobwebs burrowed between ‘A’ and ‘L’. She put the meager groceries away, and hung the bag out the window next to of her neighbor’s drying ******* cold air a mercy from the heat of the stove. Next door, the radio blares on.
Chena shonar kon bairey; Jekhaney poth nai nai re, Shekhaney okaroney jaai chhootey
Lamb’s breath sauteed with cumin, onions, garlic and green chillis from Aladdin’s Grocery on 14th and Jasper clings to her collar like an expensive perfume. The water hisses when it’s poured over, steam rising in protest. She traps under the lid, allowing a single stream to whistle her a lonely tune.
Ghorer mukhey, aar ki re? Kono din shey jabey phirey/ Jabey na jabey na, deyal joto shob gelo tootey.
Today is Salina’s birthday, her plastic table mat is still in its place on the three legged table propped against the living room wall. Shanta puts down a chipped white ceramic plate, cuts out a slice of angel birthday cake and lights a candle, a spell casting soft gold on the old crayon drawings on the plaster walls. She sits in a plastic chair and watches the door. The song reaches its crescendo.
Brishti nesha bhora shondha bela/Kon Boloraam-er ami chaela/ Amar shopno ghirey naachey maatal jutey, joto maatal jutey.
Each echo of stilettos makes Shanta hold her breath. Perhaps this year Salina will finally come back, perhaps this year the door will open and her daughter will smile, will hug her, will laugh as her mother cries. On the table, wilted jasmines, calling cards left unused, Salina’s poems cut from magazines, the word collage blurring together. “My mother's hands/calloused/call me/ bruised mango/this is love”. Each ticking of the clock another blow, another **** collecting on the plate.
Ja na chaayibar tai aaj chaayi go, Ja na paayibar tai kotha pai go? Pabo na pabo no
Mrs. Tagore’s song ends. The candle wax melts on the cake, the cake is thrown away, the room grows dark. Shanta collapses next to the stove. She undoes her yellow sari, loosens her blouse. When she strokes herself, when she comes, she bleeds, she is coming home.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 4:57 PM UTC
Hello, thank you for using Bangladesh Free. please input the number you are trying to dial.
yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to talk to myself
there, not here, my body straddles two nations
yesterday i rubbed my fading purple stretch marks
i don’t know which language I dream in any more
yesterday i sat in cold bathwater scrubbing until the purpura bleed
my mothers’ mothers’ mother died in a red river
my mothers mother’s mother birthed a nation
between her bleeding legs
most days I am still, her water’s edge, algae between teakwood toes
yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to tell myself
We’re sorry your minutes have run out. Please deposit ten dollars to continue.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 4:55 PM UTC
I've inherited my mother's fear
And my father's bitterness
And he inherited his father's recklessness
And his mother's pain
And she inherited
And he inherited
And we've inherited hatred of our own kind
Passed down from the terrorists who have colonized the lands and minds and bodies of my ancestors
And I can feel the anguish & the effects of this hereditary agony from here;
I am ready to heal.
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 7:19 PM UTC
travelin north on rumblin boxcar trains
soft iron rails confess syncopated pains
slow rhythmic rush of spinning paddlewheels
full immersion baptism in Big Muddy swales
feint clip clop thoughts of ol Bess fade fast
hum a hue of delta blues to hard times past
I lift a quiet prayer to my Lord’s willowy ear
to quell the ugly whispers of yonder city fears
Jacob Lawrence
Panel 23
Migration Series
Duke Ellington:
Daybreak Express
Orlando
9/24/17
jbm
Sep 25, 2017
Sep 25, 2017 at 12:30 PM UTC
My great
My great absent
lead, find me on my own
lip kissing ma-diaspora
below
Underneath
her grass
face first burrow
back before the living
Earth
Know well the worst of myself
Your words are worthless
Know well the worst
of the common dark spell
Cast
for hand
cast for company
in tracing pages, ancient,
stained
Jul 10, 2017
Jul 10, 2017 at 5:10 PM UTC
i wanna go on long trips with you
stop at gas stations and eat chips with you
do the things that lovers do,
get lost and dissolve into you
but,
it's okay if we just pretend
we're only going nowhere
in the end
you could leave today
behind for tomorrow
this is the diaspora where
no one follows
and i promise it won't take much
to let it all go
sometimes leaving
just looks a lot better
inside my head
Apr 28, 2017
Apr 28, 2017 at 10:22 PM UTC
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^ ^Diaspora ^ ^
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^ ^
Tonight,
a jumble is taking place
in the small wilderness...outside my window
...cicadas...crickets...lizards...
all night creatures...even the trees
join in the dance.....to survive
they could never go against the swooshing rhythm
of the rushing kingly wind.
as i am tonight...lost in my own wilderness
i feel so limited...turning left to right...to and fro
as sparks of thoughts and images...come and go
scattered ***** bouncing here and there
from corners and walls of my room
now, they're here,
later, they'd disappear.
mind is a mess...bright ideas, scamper off
fleeing from their temple...their home
refusing to be captured...
simultaneously, some known sounds
the cries...the envisioned giggles and laughter
of familiar voices, are now hidden somewhere
have sought refuge some place else.
faces...names...smiles...words...good spirits,
one by one,
slowly, have gone...
...there is only the damp darkness
of a vacuum.....an emptiness...
created by an absence
of inspirations
of people who give inspirations....but, have left
some are about to leave
thank God for those who came back,
missing fellow poets...good friends...and their works
missing the placid waters
that once surrounded us
i miss reading...feeling the sweet music...the rhymes,
the free verse of good, wholesome friendships...
of kindred spirits in poetry
in poetry...where we all started...where, in one way
or another, we all have metamorphosed...
i believe, i know...our paths didn't cross for naught.
::: ours is a small world...existing within a bigger world :::
::::::::::::::::: there needn't be a diaspora ::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::: i miss us ::::::::::::::::::
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥
Sally
Copyright March 11, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 7:58 AM UTC
I speak in two tongues and they both hiss at each other like snakes.
Tripping over my own words as my mouth becomes a battle ground.
I stand on the side-lines looking in. Waiting for the opportunity to announce my presence.
A foreigner in my motherland and a foreigner in a sea of white faces,
And I do not fit the colour scheme.
I’m a stranger, an alien, something to be prodded and poked at and made to squirm.
A minority not to be distinguished from a sea of cloth draped women.
An epitome of the strange lands of deserts and spice.
And hung above my head is a dark cloud of stereotypes and misconceptions.
The Western woman wants to fight for the freedom of the daughters of Eve,
Not understanding that her view of liberation tastes different on my tongue.
So I’m left helpless to the hot iron lens of the media, examining me like a specimen on a petri dish.
My identity, a crumbling church still worthy of all the worship.
I memorized my history books then forgot all the verses.
I grew up haunted by my ancestor’s curses.
I’ve shed so many layers of my skin attempting to fit in, now I no longer recognize myself.
I gaze into the mirror and my reflection looks away, too afraid to make eye contact with a stranger.
I am a human split in two by borders that require passports and stamps of approval.
One half of my bleeds in red, white and blue, and the other the ashes of a burning nation.
I soak up every atom in my body with a culture that isn’t mine,
And speak words that feel heavy on my mother’s broken tongue.
Embedded in the arms of parents who are too afraid to let me go, because the world is cruel to women who don’t belong.
I am like glass that has been shattered into a million pieces, and then painstakingly put back together again.
Delicate to the touch, quivering beneath broken knuckles and clenched fists.
In the back of my mind lie vague recollections of the hot marble floors of a childhood home,
Of crevices etched into unfamiliar smiling faces,
And a country which my roots have been uplifted from.
I am a kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope of clashing colours but you, you only view me in black and shades of grey.
I question how to belong without jumping into a skin suit that’s too baggy at the sleeves, because one size does not fit all.
I don’t want to lose my morals, values and system of beliefs.
A whirlwind of obstacles surrounding me, closing in on all sides…it’s hard to breathe.
But even after multiple blows I’m still holding onto this thread of hope…and pulling.
Unravelling what’s beneath.
And when I raise my firm hands to the sky I pray,
That my wandering soul finds a place to call home one day.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 2:37 PM UTC
So what I drink all my calories
I'm sane and you're not, bruh
It's never enough even to wear
what you're wearing and talk
like you talk, do you even care?
Killing myself keeping things legit in your sphere
Black sheep combine forces to feel
wanted, keeping your company
I feel blocked when you're nodding.
Yes, I'm acting just like you want me,
bruh, I'm coming up short to your haughti
ness, blessed with a sense of self
stopping just short of your level and
what the hell, what I am doing here
fighting for otherness, concerned
with the purity of water of my brothers
and my sisters of the covenant
You talk about faith when it comes
to prey that you're stalking, keep
it strong, yolo, fleek, and a hashtag
To be honest I'm scared that my hometown
will be infested with those the internet
claimed and ingest, swallowed with
speed of light, people spit out as pesticide
turning the verdant green such a ****** brown
Yes you're so on top and classy, lacking
purposely the tenets that turn a body fancy
Cool *** beard bro, girl that's a freak ***
hairdo, up in the midst short sides a pool cue
locked in your hands up inside a ******* dive bar,
midnight drive holding a pipe 'hind your
headlights, Yes you're mixing with the best
making them arrogant, such a lens to view
the struggles they been through, Weird queer
younglings in their late twenties and homeless
at some point, only the noise of the sirens
and blue lit bathrooms, keeper of the needle
rights, and happiness,5-0 lights blasting on naito, picking
on the kids white/brown outside washing
the day away with the kiss of the pabst
taking a nap on the grass on the waterfront
blessed with lives with beards and queers
passing by as they want one.
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 3:21 AM UTC