#passport
Shoulders back,
chin up high,
I'm trying to look normal,
but this ID tells a lie,
and it is making me look
like a criminal.
This photo is ideal
with a serial number
on a mugger's profile,
on a database all alone.
My identity is distilled to this:
a stranger with a face of stone.
The camera captured everything
except my personality,
my smile, my kind eyes
and what makes me, me.
As my face became a moment,
falsified for bureaucracy.
©️Lizzie Bevis
May 25, 2025
May 25, 2025 at 4:38 AM UTC
Ah, Pradip,
once more, like a 1000 times before,
you submit title, demanding a poem,
daring me to author it's entire body & cell structure,
give it a native language birthmark, and a history unique,
even a name
Un fair!
Is it only me that you burden so, I doubt it.
Each of us has the right to the small tinys, things we see,
the embellishments of our lives,
filling our hives with pure honey,
and letting the other others peek
over our shoulders, as we write to each other,
always one more time until there is no more time
Do words have any boundaries?
How is it that words can cross the seas, the mountains, all the while,
interjecting the fullness of their import?
What time is it you ask?
Here, not yet 5 AM, and once more, here again, roused from sleep after vivid dreams, and finger pointing of my poetic life responsibility to complete this task, you gave me unasked, but know me too well, for well they rang like a bell in the brain,
a burr in the bed,
a gun to the head
Each
and all commanding,
fulfill me!
Do words require a passport to cross oceans? Do words have citizenship?
Why does entry into a different country require each time, a new poem?
yes, the house is dark,
I am alone, but not really…
The words that are conscripted to be issued, in this missive, fall so easily from my lips, that it is as if they were already there,
MRE's
?
pre-prepared, "meals – ready – to eat, "
for voyaging to the Indian continent, not caring if they came alone, or with my body in their person possessed
How is the little granddaughter?
Does she command you to write poetry too?
Does she write poetry too?
Does she learn English as well as her native tongue?
How do you tell her that you love her, celebrate her,
and that her fame and escapades are unkempt
by real geographical boundaries,
and travel around the world?
Ah, You see
I have charged you now with responsibility!
Ah, the tables have turned, now boundaries must be crossed again with a passport issued from a foreign land (foreign to me anyway),
And I wonder and wander, when they arrive, how will I know,
commit them to memory, and love them with all my heart forever?
Praddip!
Go for one of your walks on quiet nearly empty roads, see the old people beside them, doing the things that old people do,
and memorialize these moments,
you do
so well, so fine, and let the other onlookers hear them spoke, in every language, so many love poems to life, we do not lack for any,
but always, always, always,
demand and require,
n e e d
(he howls)
one more!
Time: 5:1 2 AM
Eastern standard time
New York City
By the Atlantic Ocean
On an island surrounded by water,
That 1,000,000 or more every day pass by,
And here,
h e a r not the flow,
lost amidst
the blaring megaphone of silences
of
city noises, city words, cityscapes, human miracles, and tragedies, it cannot be.
that
I am
the only one so burdened!
And by well traveled poetry,
so un burdened
This semi private, totally public,
Love now,
Love note
is complete as of 5:16 a.m., and after a quick review, will be sent on to you, for submission of a unique-passport for
with its very own
valid entry stamp
nml
Apr 11, 2025
Apr 11, 2025 at 3:00 PM UTC
Just, are like MTN
everywhere you go,
Walking to be ZAIN
a wonderful world,
Want have a VISA
for their passport to
to reach the world,
If they own, a GLO
they will rule
the world
Sep 8, 2020
Sep 8, 2020 at 7:43 AM UTC
Dusting off passport of dreams,
I begin to travel in day.
The wind at back that hugs.
The delicate scent of flowers.
The birds whistling in ears.
Moving with passport of grand opportunities,
the sun stamps my conscious mind.
Feet dance on life's road.
Heartbeats sing gracefully.
Gratitude enters in breath.
Unlimited pages of book opens,
as I move with compassionate heart.
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 9:48 AM UTC
the smell of a hospital
disinfecting hands and
identities
placed on the counter.
a passport-size ambition
a fingerprint of luck.
you have arrived.
you are here.
you came in
a bus full of languages
funnelled into the room
'welcome to - '
lost and found
in translation.
you cannot understand
you will try
to understand.
your newness.
new you.
you are new.
you do not understand
you are here.
Aug 31, 2016
Aug 31, 2016 at 3:43 AM UTC
I ask Trevor why he carries around his passport
from when he was 14
as his only form of government I.D.
It's for cigarettes
he says with a shrug,
and takes a drag from the passenger seat
of my car.
He reminds me of someone
who shouldn't be in this era, a misplaced Kerouac,
and at any moment
would hop a freight train
or subway car
to pass through someone else's life
in the time it takes to turn breath
into carbon.
Trevor, I say,
you know you can't get out of the country with that. It's expired.
I know,
he smirks.
I just like the illusion that
I'm going somewhere.
There's a sad sweetness in the way
he keeps his heart
in a list of area codes;
that home is synonymous
with an expired ability to leave
the way a seagull takes to ocean breeze.
I don't know what he'd do if he actually had the chance.
Trevor's passport
is nearly filled with other worlds
he prefers,
and other lives he's lived,
in only a leather jacket
and a pair of scuffed up Adidas.
I keep wondering
about the day he'll turn us
into stamps to include in the rest of his collection,
squeezed into one of the few blank spaces left
in a crowded itinerary,
(cemetery),
and then
he'll renew his passport.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 11:14 AM UTC
A faded passport,
Of who I used to be,
It says that Dark and Hatred,
Are my nationalities,
It says my forename's Fear,
My surname: Everything,
My date of birth is long since gone,
But it's clear enough to see,
From my picture: a face covered in scars,
My life's been long enough for me.
But the expiry date says today,
And I'm sure I've been set free,
I'll send off the details for my new life,
And rewrite my history.
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 4:00 PM UTC
drying my eyes with the crumpled plane tickets
that brought me here
as the new ones slowly print, inch by inch
and the ink dries upon my cheeks
and the time has been tattooed into my eyelids
ticking away, ticking closer and closer
to the end
closing my ears to the sound of cars
passing by on an open road
as the sound of wheels on concrete presses
into my memory and suddenly
i am in a taxi, speeding towards the last drop
of this city, and part of me is left behind
among the crashing water of spring
and the wood chips of an abandoned playground
and the puddles that we avoided as we ran
uncontrollably down the street
laughing
i am not laughing now, except to appear
alive as the boy who makes my coffee
makes me a joke too, free of charge
and i don’t want him or anyone to worry about me
so my mouth opens a crack, and my eyes fold inwards
and he smiles, placing my drink on the counter
and i burn my tongue trying to drown
that fake laugh
the tickets are done printing
the zipper has been forced
over the gaps between my fingers
where your hand should be
and the puzzle wavers as i pack it, but
the pieces stay together, at least until
i close the suitcase
and somehow, i am confident
that it will remain intact
i crumple the tickets in my hand
in an effort to make them look old
as if the summer had already passed
and i was on my way back to fill my empty palm
with warm skin, soft words and a hard press
of my mouth to the sound of something akin to home
i can feel the push and pull of two places
that have shaped me and are shaping me still
as my body curves around the ribs
and hips of a new kind of comfort
and the stiff seat in this airplane
reminds me that i am never as comfortable
as when i am with you
and i resign myself to sunny months
and warm music
and the discomfort of a puzzle
that is trying its hardest
to stay together
and i resign myself to dipping my toes in the water each night
pulling out the glue from between them
and keeping the pieces together
pressing my hand into the soft wood of the dock
in an effort to shut out the cold air
and i resign myself to the confidence i feel
knowing time will be on my side
when i need it to be
i throw the old tickets in the trash
and slip the new ones inside my passport
ready
to keep myself together
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 12:09 AM UTC