#migrants
Time has no wings
But it flies faster than bald eagles and fast jets
Time has no rings
But it is engaged or bound to ‘no safety nets’
And married with death.
We are all migrants in the depth
Of the valleys. We are passing by
Like the wind. No matter how hard we try
We will have to go
Like an unwanted cargo.
Time is nobody’s enemy
Be smart to lend a hand
To a stranger, for no real friend
Exists in this messy quagmire
Where everything is strange and dire.
We really own nothing
We are all living on borrowed time
We shall pay for the crime
Remember that we own nothing
Yet we keep on fantasizing and dreaming.
Time, which is not an enemy
Owns everything under the sun
And everything under the blue moon
FYI: Nobody has returned from Heaven
Not even the wisest angel of the deep blue Sea.
Copyright © April 2025, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.
Apr 10, 2025
Apr 10, 2025 at 11:51 PM UTC
It felt cold again today
as I scraped a little ice on the car
for the daily journey
my fingers ached a touch as winter spoke,
but no brine soaked my skin to crack,
no frozen gun barrel bullied my neck,
forced my unready body
to a too small boat,
crammed where fears of all ages merged,
and hope drowned
It felt cold again today
Nov 25, 2021
Nov 25, 2021 at 1:20 PM UTC
My mother would often suggest I sleep on it.
Presumably mulling over all the possible outcomes whilst dreaming.
We were raised with anxiety, my mother was a live wire; adrenaline primed our hearts to avoid judgment, or catastrophe in an uncertain future.
At this very moment I am living in the now, and in love with all living things, no-longer afraid; no longer clinging to the illusion of control, in an uncertain future.
Jun 30, 2021
Jun 30, 2021 at 10:11 AM UTC
tizz is love it or hate it, nuttin' in between
addicted to yayo like sheen, 500 bpm heartbeat
don't do it anymore, but remain psychotic
and hunt down idiotics like a carnivore
from florida to berlin, from tropic to toxic
deep in da game, da grimy streetz know my name
it'z tizzop, 14.8 inchez of hip-hop
hangin' at rashid'z, shisha ready, cuban necklace
three men in da back but ya don't know who it iz
all of 'em are dark-skinned, all of 'em are bearded
most important of all: all of 'em are fearless
we don't know what it meanz to be scared
just some migrantz who will now be heard
da territory split up: kurdz, arabz and turkz
we got our own law, like omerta, like da cosa
one apartment here, and one block' there
like bushido did, back in da dayz wit fler
sonny black carlo, godfatherz, yeeeah
power is about makin it and takin it, unlike nine said
unlike any other guy said, and if ya don't wanna buy it
find ya eyez in da wine-red, da choppaz are wild catz
ya can use them for da furiouz, some become notoriouz
otherz don't and die, but dey will be honored:
watch da muralz; urban networkz, also in da rural,
and five-o just remainz neutral; it is crucial to be brutal
as it iz to remain truthful; lyricistz can't deal wit diz
g-boy attitude of tizz: letz celebrate diversity
and ante up on google, i write barz and do diz
i'm a little too youthful for these oldskoolish
Jan 28, 2021
Jan 28, 2021 at 8:12 AM UTC
I can stay and die
or I can try to go where angry folk don’t want me
Death, or raging pink faces
is a choice of sorts,
but still no place, no home
So, beheading, or maybe hanging,
lynched by dragging,
or if lucky, shot alone,
versus locking up in a green walled facility,
****** as it may be,
until someone takes a moment to judge me safe,
is luxury
Or maybe I’ll be deported,
doomed,
I struggle to see your view against me
As a young brown man I know I’m done,
I might have a degree in medicine
or years of fixing cars or houses, horses,
understand trade or charity
It won’t matter
when my photofit
reminds you of another brown man
who blew himself up or lashed out with a knife,
for a misread life and afterlife
A few white lives will always tip the scale
where hundreds,
thousands,
millions of ours,
despite your fears
will not prevail
Aug 11, 2020
Aug 11, 2020 at 3:14 PM UTC
To all the people who
leave their homeland
to escape from their lives
unaware that they
won’t make it alive
on the other side,
oblivious to the horrific
idea that they will
scream and cry
while watching their
babies drown and die:
may the waves carry you
in a better world
than the one in which
we are living now.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 5:58 PM UTC
are like some people,
they are victimized to death
within one's palm
they're taken down and thrown
they had power
but no more
human eyes show pity
for picking them,
but not humanity
pressed flowers are they
who sleep under the tents,
walking for decades,
searching for new hope
cause it's crumbled back home.
Dec 30, 2018
Dec 30, 2018 at 11:24 AM UTC
a fast moving cloud,
soon becomes a flock of birds;
migrants in frenzy!
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 11:41 PM UTC
Doctor Larch peers out the window,
Pulling aside brocaded curtains to hide
The grief that he will not show,
The rending emptiness he feels inside.
As his son Homer rides past the sunset,
Not knowing where he goes
But aspiring to see the wide world,
The ocean at Mount Desert,
Seeing wonder in the expanse
And worlds inside a circle of glass.
He has taken with him his heart,
A dark picture of frailty.
He finds unexpected work in an orchard,
Leisurely harvesting round, garnet jewels.
The nomads, dark and wary,
Ask him to read about death and stars.
There are rules for the workers.
And Homer finds that they apply
To no one, neither nomads or
Curious young men.
He sees in the errant father
The reflection of his own,
The man who made him good.
“You are my work of art”
He wrote.
Like an artist with his painting,
Who resists giving it away,
So Doctor Larch holds on to him
Hoping his adolescence ends
And he returns.
Finding peace at the last.
The lack of rules bring about a sea change,
Allowing forbidden love and pain.
He ventures out once more into the vacuum
Of conscience set free,
He devises his own rules about the womb
And how to help those in agony
But eventually…
With all the rules now open,
There is nothing left for him to do.
So he boards the migrant truck
Just as the pilot returns, broken.
He watches the struggle with a wheelchair
Sees his lover watch him with her yellow hair
Knows her future, years of sacrifice.
And he admits at last
That he has a purpose,
The train to St. Cloud huffs slowly away,
With Homer standing in the wet snow.
There is the old asylum,
The orphanage and home on the hill,
Almost black, with the sunset behind,
Homer begins the long climb.
He approaches slowly.
But then, a burst of laughter
And children from the door
Flock around him, dancing, shrieking,
Some holding him like an errant dog,
Who must be told to stay.
“Will you stay?” they ask.
“I think so,” he smiles in irony.
He is home at the last.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 10:58 AM UTC
hunched over, a brown-skinned army,
picking, the field soon to be stripped of its bounty;
they will move to the next one, fast,
before the fruit falls to the ground
"los ninos, los viejos tambien"
the young, the old ones also help, though
they are slower and tote less a load
when the day is done, they build fires
for the frijoles, and to keep the night's spirits
at bay; they sleep in the shanties, the sheds
the master provides
the next day will be the same, though maybe
not as hot--maybe a rain will give them respite
from their labors
a gentle, short shower they pray,
for a storm might lay ruin to the crops, the treasure
they borrow only long enough
to basket and truck
not even a cloud visits the white sky
so the stooping, the loading drags on without relief
but from the north, a cool wind does blow
in it they hear a voice without cords vibrating,
yet one that speaks a language their hearts know well,
telling them their toil is to be brief, yet eternal: that winter
only whispers now, but soon commands all to rest
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 1:20 PM UTC
*When you've grown up being
called a stranger wherever
you go, you learn to make
home of whatever ground
of little discomfort you
find, you play deaf to
insults and jeers
you hide your
tears and
promise
yourself that
someday you'll
find a home for you
and teach yourself to
believe that lie because
the reality of truth's
too bitter for
you to take it
anymore...*
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 10:51 AM UTC
Intimidated by political thugs
Prone to insert in one's mouth
The nose of a loaded gun
Or suspend a plastic bottle full of water
On males' reproductive *****
Devoid of freedom of expression
Also denied to his right and
Deplorable condition drawing attention
Shunning his God chosen land,
What is more a bright and warm country
Under the sun ,a journalist dreaming began
Fighting all odds between
The deep blue sea and the angry Satan
To migrate to a better place,
Where for democracy
Avowedly there is a better space,
Inhabited by civilized people,
Averse to discrimination based on race!
Burning his boat,
Crossing desserts,
Crammed with other refugees,
Packed with him in a boat
Some trying to reverse
Their economic lot,
Surfing uncharted waters
Seeking a paradise on earth
He headed to the country he sought
Though some their lives
At the hand of brutal traffickers lost
Beaten and thrown out of the boat,
Also at a port
Suspected of a terrorist bent
Many migrants to prisons were sent.
After a humiliating acid test
Why for a dreamland his country he left
As migrants' bane
They placed him at the foot
Of an ice-clad mountain.
“I will never see
My country again,
You are trying my patience in vain!"
He vowed
Despite the razor-sharp cold untold.
Then they took him up higher
An epitome to a cold fire!
Once more
He put his foot down
Putting on more clothes and
Changing attire.
They placed him
At the mountain's helm
As hell dark
Where the angel of death
Is seen stark.
Then in his head
Something began to bark
“*You rather choose
the better evil
If both your assailants and hosts
Are no two different devil! *"
Seeing first hand
Those with cold shoulder
Assylem seekers adore to attack
Though there are
Few not off humanity's track
At last he decided to return back
And under his country's sun bask
Mum for his rights to ask
Killing his journalistic knack!
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 9:18 AM UTC
at one time, we were all migrants
we had a dream and tried to find it
the torch of freedom was our light of guidance
we might have died if our cries were silenced
their dream relies on our compliance
we can't decline the reasons behind it
hear their cries and let them find an alliance
they're just trying to escape the violence
Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015 at 8:57 PM UTC
What’s good for the life
It wasn’t just spontaneity
It was the ability to see conflict as growth
Getting along with everyone… he aspired to be more than that
Polite conversation was as meaningless as pretension
He wanted the feelings that he blamed on the past to live on
There was no time for idle talk or self-importance
He just wanted to speak the truth
But where would he find himself if the world was on fire
Or his family needed him more
What fact of life should he follow
What he could swear to… witnessed or not
Or what he assumed to be true from the look on her face
A street walker didn’t have the luxury to think of these things
Yet conflict was all around
His toes started bleeding as he ran
He wondered if it was better to lose some every now and then
Was old blood as bad as an old grudge?
We carry these things inside of us but to sleep well is to accept
To lie awake in a pool of anger is to suffer without redemption
He knew these things instinctively
It didn’t take a revolution
In his mind or his country
He knew of musicians who made money from another man’s pain
He wondered if anyone would write about him
But did he have to die first?
As they walked across the tracks
And climbed fences
The world blamed them as it always does
But not so the wind
Or the birds that walked beside them
Somehow they knew of the choice that tormented them
Who can migrate as a bird except a man trying to save his family?
He tried to become a survivor
Not knowing now where his grave would be dug
Or even to live forever inside a poem
Where were the peace signs for his plight
Where was the poetry for his soul
Empathy was a closed door
Heroic courage was an extinguished flame
He once thought the world loved children
But not his
As he continued to bleed on the streets where love went to die
He became something that he never knew
Homeless
Unwanted
A burden
All because he lived where God couldn’t make up his mind
Because prophets chose to remain silent
Because the temple crumbled before the cries of the people
He wanted to be vision to his family
A vision of comfort and stability
Yet he could only guide along an abandoned railroad track
It was the end
The end of peace
And he was to be blamed because he didn’t choose to die
Like a captain who abandoned his ship
He left his country but the ocean upon which he walks
Is not a miracle of the Gods
But instead burning stones where pride melts
And memories of his ancestors are the ashes of a modern world
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 12:23 AM UTC
A flag of a distant island
On the wall of a "home"
Made on a compound
An immigrant family
A mother trying hard
To grasp the sands
Slipping through
the hands of time
As the children prides
Themselves
On the fading memory
Of a language spoken
In a far away land...
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 12:38 PM UTC
Nobody heard them, the 900,
But still they lay screaming.
We were much further out than they were,
And not waving but drowning.
Poor migrants, lured to a better life –
Now they’re dead.
It must have been too hot for them
In Gambia, Senegal, Syria, they said,
Oh no no no, it was too hot always,
Still, the stranded ones lay screaming.
We were much further out than they were,
And not waving but drowning.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 8:02 AM UTC
Willing to risk all,
Desperate people seek refuge.
We'd rather they die.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 10:53 AM UTC