"expatriate" poems
GUNS
Tanning
Karate
Outrunning storms on 40
Outlasting my compatriots full of toxins
Yawning after afternoon
Delight and coffees.
I'm going to miss her like hell
When I expatriate,
Her and these simple road signs.
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 22, 2011 at 2:40 AM UTC
Before the thaw, my feet will be rooted
Into this nation’s primordial freeze
My muscles and bones will be acquainted with malaise
The sun’s altruism will be refuted
Before the thaw, I will struggle to find consciousness
The frost will leak through the bedroom window
And don the facade of a blanket
The door will prove to be bottomless
Possibilities will seem unachievable
The brain will itch for what it can not have
Buses will limp through congestion
And the blizzards may feast on the feeble
You may want to write of your misery
But your automation will halt in cataclysm
Because someone held a door open
For the gust that billows bitterly
Gastric emissions will become tangible
As smouldering wastes contrast against the sky with rancour
The wispy whites, marginalized into *****
And the world remains infallible
I will lack the tools of incision
To enact my life’s revisions
I will weep for my unguided millions
While I saunter into oblivion
After the thaw, I will smile
My expatriate soul will run in the whimsical wind
Of the morning dayspring that will march unto me
I will stand over a kingdom of honey-filled tiles
After the thaw, the arks will converge
Into the straits of the Bermudian Sea and the
Elusive Caspian Forest, where I will learn to love again
While bidding farewell to winter’s dirge
In the waking world, I will ***** a limestone castle
Where entropy will rule and the mind’s domain
Is left susceptible to perennial reverence
The sea, coloured true, nesting a fairgrounds vessel
In this Great Revision, gargantuan skyways
Will show the world how exiguous we are
That we must not wait for exodus to come
Should we fear to waste away
Into icebergs
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 5:35 PM UTC
Let's ban beer,
Expel wine,
Prohibit whiskey.
Let's banish ****
Curse smokes,
Relegate ***
Drive off knives,
Expatriate guns,
Deport bullies and fists.
Let's ward off the devine,
And the ghosts,
And those who think
They're holy sons;
In any or all
Religions.
Let's proclaim a holy war,
A jihad, if you wish,
Crusade against what
Makes us human,
And live in boring bliss.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
Opulent expatriate of mine vision's,
I delayed for thee on a timeclock not known to terrestrial creature's...
I hath seen thy feature's
Whence I was perched upon the lozenge conduit,
Henceforth knowing it was thee,
Mine other half....
Mine anodyne of high godly class.....
Mine spirit without thee is halfed,
Like a split down mine center.....
For thou hath entered me
Through the eye's
And into mine conscience!!!!
For thou feeleth as if thyself hath no worth,
But I remembered thee at ourn spiritual birth
From whence we were covered in blankets!!!
Warmed by eachother's skin...
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 6:30 PM UTC
It was 3:30 in the morning
The aunt died, heart attack they said.
I only have a pale memory of her
The pink-house, protest and abuse.
Grandfather plucked us from there
the next day
The pink hibiscus my mother planted
did not depart.
She is dead today
I went to see her in black clothes,
The house, an empty aluminium box-
With kids playing ‘ring around the roses’,
Uncles debated politics and aunts gossiped
And some moaned inside.
I waited outside with few strange women,
They asked me questions
plenty of them
The anti-social me smiled.
The morning was usual
Mother made noises in the kitchen
with her steel plates and old radio,
Father forgot the fish on his
green kinetic honda,
Cats had a feast that evening
I did yoga, read newspaper and did-
not take a wash.
The dead body arrived late noon
in an ambulance with her expatriate son.
There was a sudden burst of cry-
inside- her daughter and grandchildren.
She looked like the fish to me,
The fish my father brought that morning
from the market, cold and dead.
Her daughter’s cry reminded me of-
an elapsed day in my pink house.
My father kept pink flowers on her feet
and prayed
I did not move, sat with the same chitchatting
women
The chanting became loud and it reverberated.
The body was finally taken to the fire
My mother came late, she wept.
The body burned down in minutes,
Dear relatives decamped.
I sat on the same chair
with my cousins
drawing the family tree, locating stories
and laughed over family jokes.
Then we sat tight lipped with brandy fumes
and cashews.
I came back home with my father
in the green kinetic honda,
I looked for the fish and the cat
I could not find both.
Sep 4, 2015
Sep 4, 2015 at 11:27 AM UTC
I call you Giulietta, amore dolorosa,
I plead guilty of wringing and clawing my own heart
and I love you, I love you, I love you, dulcet!
with my red paint like some Muscovy ivory ****** of an expatriate
but you, you're the *****
I plead guilty to gross desertion
in the face of your tears in the hollow of the night
--oh, I love you, I love you, I love you, I can't not--
toss my hair, fix my earrings, gold against sable,
but it looks too much like the gold of your hair
and I crumble like the sandswept stone
of Ozymandias, of the relics of some ancient love
some ancient had for the contours of the Sphinx
and I just think up more sweet nothings for you,
because every word is a nothing compared to you,
and how I love and love and love you,
but you, you're a *****
Dec 3, 2012
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:35 AM UTC
Freedom to live,
freedom to die,
freedom american,
or fredom un-american.
Live as you like,
be as you like,
as all should be,
be as all should be.
Freedom is an act,
and love is no peace.
Live forever, die forever.
They call me expatriate,
and I go on living.
They say I should die,
and I go on living.
Freedom to live,
freedom to die,
I sigh,
I recoil,
"ah, must be a lie".
Freedom is no number,
death is no song.
Life is no art,
words are no truth.
Freedom is yours,
and freedom is mine.
No flag,
no country,
no truth.
Freedom is no lie.
Nov 29, 2016
Nov 29, 2016 at 3:35 AM UTC
If we can travel and enjoy and be everywhere
Who is to know where the heart is really?
The heart has eyes, can see, knows the way.
Tempers, tidal waves, tsunamis, towns and cities.
Being in love is the tops, the best, the bounty.
I have found the treasure.
I have swallowed and been swallowed up in it.
This love has taken me.
This love has saved me.
This is me.
I am seeing me again.
Long lost me.
It is nice this fantasy, this feeling, this fortune of love.
This is wondrous, has filled my heart with song.
Has filled my oneness, my ownness, myself with the fountain of youth.
With healing and air.
With heart beats, and blood flow and mind occupying thoughts of meeting
And touching and talking and more.
Warmth
Warming
Wanting more.
I am full where I never knew I was empty.
More of my life has opened up now
More of my fears have been made into nonsense.
For me to want to expand,
Expound,
Expatriate,
For me to fly to experience and to enjoy is proof.
How can this be wrong or unsound or mean or unjust?
My heart, my soul, is wrapped in a warmth that I thought was long lost.
I am in love.
Dec 5, 2011
Dec 5, 2011 at 12:46 AM UTC
i loath that educational poetry that's intended to address you with scold or searching for a higher tier of morality, there are poems like that out there (rudyard kipling e.g.), with educational / instructional overtones in the way they're written, i always wonder though: did the poet remember the idea of solipsism and writing the poem as if to himself, a note to self, rather than for others to peer into the poem and learn something?
that's the thing though,
i'm a child of immigrants...
actually an immigrant
myself... no, wait, let's do
what the higher tiers of society
call it: i'm an expatriate,
a child of expatriates -
and they still talk with an accent,
me? self-taught english
from the age of 8, retained my
mother tongue nonetheless,
speak none of the two tongues with
an accent, unless i want to,
a friend of mine introduced me
to a greek cypriot, lovingly ridiculed
me as posh... and let me tell you,
sounding posh in essex is hard to do,
i admit it would be harder in
scotland or east london, but essex
is still a hefty mountain to climb -
it's like that crass joke i heard in
the edinburgh comedy club i used to
haunt once a week...
a guy stands up and with a mighty grin
announced himself with over-stressed
elocution: 'you might recognise my accent
(i.e. denoting where he came from,
a great conversation starter on these
islands)... it's educated',
and that really crushed the hazelnut
in his **** -
well if it was a woman telling the same
joke, it would be a crushed hazelnut
between the legs - missionaries
in positions of ardent prayer
and christmas wrapping paper -
because a woman's strength in the leg department
is like the lips of oysters, or any over shellfish
for that matter - insects of the deep blue
(exoskeleton).
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 3:16 PM UTC
As I lie down on my bed I saw you pushing the half-closed door and entering
You wore a red saree
You are as gorgeous as ever
Sacred like a temple in the dawn
Like a woman who has bathed in night dew
Someone who knows everything about me and yet come to know me from the very beginning
The old door swings in the air
I can see your face as calm as neat as clean
Like the moon outside shining
Let it be cliche, but today it is truly a full moon night
I cannot say what I wanted to say you
Everything has been dusted in time
How do you find the old address of an expatriate?
The yellow envelopes and the red-inked words must have turned blue now
Once I sent within them the clouds
Which kissed you as rain
You in red saree stare at me
Ah! Is it really you?
Or it is all a surreal magic of hallucination
But at that moment you sat beside me on the bed and kissed me deeply
And whisper in my ear
Like a fairy tale told thousand nights ago,
"You still smell the same? And me?"
The last tram of the night goes through
On the empty tracks now lay, love.
Apr 21, 2020
Apr 21, 2020 at 2:57 PM UTC
She resides on the street outside my office,
from sleepy mornings to crowded nights.
Apparently we share the same working hours.
The hands of Norther has begun to claw
through coats and bones with greediness.
And I worry that she might catch the cold.
Her patient resilience and humble posture,
head bowed down, hand stretched out
constricts my heart in terrified recognition.
She looks like a queen dethroned.
Where was her kingdom before this street?
She seems ageless but infinitely ancient.
I wonder...
What’s it like to watch legs pass you by,
briskly stomping away in annoyance.
How dare she remind us about the flaws of life.
That we are less human than we admit
behind our busy faces and comfortable shoes.
What’s it like begging for plated coins,
when you’ve sacrificed everything
in a foreign country digging for gold?
Humiliation convolutes my heart
every time the ignorant titter of the young
and the turned away faces of the old
depreciate her existence.
Despite my fidgeting just minutes ago
I slowed down by the corner,
searching an answer in her fathomless eyes,
The story of sacrifice is clasped in her hands,
a framed picture of a boy and a girl.
The scribble on it says: ”Please help,
me and my children are starving.”
I knelt beside her,
shyly stroking her weathered hand
before placing the hot Chai by her side
and laying down my tribute in her paper cup.
Her hand held warmth,
when grasping mine, lifting it to her lips.
The kiss and gentle blessing startled me.
Rising to my feet again and heading back
to my comfortable office...
...it started to rain.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC
I tell you all
I lost my soul one morning in October
still i can feel it trembling
with the mucous in my throat
the liquor coating of an empty stomach
denying re-entry
an expatriate exiled to the outer realms
the cells spoke to me in my elusive haze
what atrocities you brought with you the night before
volatile liquids
and billows of chyme decaying smoke
it was you who erased that patch of flesh from your cheek
the sidewalk merely a catalyst
a surrogate mother to your infantile stupidity
fathered by a not so impotent bicycle
what became was a dance with gravity
and you tried to take the lead
but that possessive ***** refused to give it up
and in a drunken stupor
thrashed you about
leaving you to the jagged teeth of concrete
costing you some epidermal friends
those whose sole duty it is to protect us
and your foolishness allowed their dismantling
so now we allow yours
so they did
with one swoop of my head
my body purged my soul into the poisonous sunlight
my brain a series of bombastic drum solos
i died there in my bed
soulless and aching
a drink in my hand....
Oct 6, 2011
Oct 6, 2011 at 4:26 PM UTC
I have faith I will one day have this memory of occurring to god.
presently, I exhibit expatriate tendencies
in the shadow
of my mother.
I entered this museum for boys
hidden in a mirror
on a time delay.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 2:15 PM UTC
Yes, I am waiting for the cold,
for it is far too warm here as of late,
and this is not how it’s supposed to unfold.
I left home when I was not quite so old
and my choice they all berate.
But I am just waiting for the cold
as if this worry can be controlled,
with that which can inebriate.
Isn’t that how it’s supposed to unfold,
when often I see him and it takes hold?
Wishing I had the words to elaborate,
but he left me waiting in the cold.
It is a story that I rarely have told,
for to him I am the true expatriate.
This is the way it’s supposed to unfold
though its unclear if I could have foretold,
that we would be two separate schoolmates?
On this day, I am still here, waiting on the cold
to freeze the warmth that should not still unfold
Nov 15, 2010
Nov 15, 2010 at 6:59 PM UTC
Castigate Sublimate
Sanctify Indoctrinate
Expatriate Disseminate
Proselytize Reiterate
Reject, Deny, and Obfuscate
Incarcerate Dehumanize
Desensitize Decimate
Incinerate Rejuvenate
Simplify and Permeate
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 9:44 AM UTC
stained glass with sunlight streaming,
a single rivulet, a single tear,
slips silently down the bridge of a nose
to fall silently to the tip of another.
eyes meet while hands continue to cradle
the face of the accused, the prosecuted, the expatriate of vagrants:
three words, blooming like delicate flowers from deep emerald vines that grow freely and climb the trunks of trees with more nimbleness than the lost boys themselves,
three words, gliding like the lone droplet from the lips of the holder,
descending to the ears of the held,
and they rang out as much as a whisper could, among dancing dust and gentle breath,
"you
are
forgiven."
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
dialects of dogma in the corner
coffee shop - I recognized them
too easily, as an expatriate
heard clearly in the crowd across the square,
where I’d rather be blending in,
forgetting my mother tongue, speaking
an unknown language, written
by the dust of my boots, learned
through the salt of my skin, weathered
as the pages of my Bible are worn
and consumed alone
with God in the corner
booth of this coffee shop
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 7:36 AM UTC
I salute no flag, I follow no man
I am undisciplined; an expatriate; a mutineer.
I am not consumed. I believe in Infinity.
But so what?
It's a hell of a lot better than casting stones into the abyss of life, which only cries back in a tune of some ever-pervading samsara, whose only note was proof for Hamlets second conjecture; counting your days, numbering the stars, feeling pleasure only to one day die a purposeless death; guilty.
Jesus said everything in red ink,
the bible tells me so.
Freedom can only be given to those that are bound.
It is both a fact and failure of nature.
Our power binds us;
Our lack of power binds us.
We are enslaved on all sides:
By the infinite and the finite.
And yet we are set free
by this selfsame fact.
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 6:58 PM UTC
When I see the people abandon their old American Dream,
I read about their travels, their hungers and their happinesses,
I wonder if it is
madness
or if it is
love
which has inspired their souls
to commit the ultimate treason-
the pursuit of freedom.
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 8:45 PM UTC
I have neglected you, dear one,
once so full and vivid, now
expatriate in the cheerless corner.
Look at you drooping, clinging
to the bloodless parts of you,
having long dwindled in
the thankless dark.
Here I come with a sharp pang,
lovely amputee.
How much happier you will be
to forget the bereft bits,
no longer of use in your unfolding.
Until memory pales,
will your phantom limbs
also rustle in the window’s breeze?
Mar 9, 2020
Mar 9, 2020 at 12:51 PM UTC
They paired us
In Paris
Dreamed up
Things to scare us
But the poets
Left for France
Because they could
Afford it
If I could have been
Gone with them
They would not have
To expatriate me
No need to separate me
From this American family
Of consumerism and greed
I would have preferred
To be in love in Paris
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 11:03 AM UTC
on the puke and blood painted
walk in front of a Juarez **********
sat a blind mendicant,
his cup half full with pesos, pennies
and a grand FDR dime or two
beside him a cur loused in lassitude,
perhaps the personal, impotent Cerberus
for this den of five dollar iniquity
sixteen I was, an acute expatriate
from a drunken El Paso house home
free to roam the streets of old Mexico,
so long as I didn't wake any Policia
or **** on the wrong curb
an empty belly and nascent love of drink swung my moral compass
from wobbly to dead down
and I filched the eyeless beggar's blue tin
he couldn't see, but the jingle jangle of his coins sliding
into my pocket filled his old ears
"ladron, ladron, cabron, " he screamed
thief, thief, *******
his words trailed me down the alley into an avenue of neon noise,
until I slipped into a bar, nouveau riche
my ***** was better than a buck so I ordered two beers
and a double tequila
feeling fine until I smelled the dung of the dog,
scribed penance in the grooves of my Keds
olfactory justice for stealing from the blind; a small price to pay
for the riches of drunkenness, the sweet taste of oblivion
(Juarez, Mexico, 1965)
Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 12:04 AM UTC
Remember me
When you discover
You're careless for the world
Visible to me,
Remember me,
When your ways become complex
you regret
you lost your way
back to my hand,
Remember me,
When you become an expatriate
When you become cold,
When you become lonely,
While you become an empty heart,
When you don't have anything from this world
Except your memories with me,
I would leave you on the same road
that you intend to leave me.
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 11:49 PM UTC
The odd thing about love is the ease in which it engulfs you.
You can easily find yourself an expatriate of your isolated experiences.
It is beautiful - to exist in a world of your fond choosing, with a love who cherishes every moment with you.
It is deluding.
It ends.
In its end,
it is disappointing.
Love feels like standing on the edge of a cliff - a cliff sufficiently masked with fog - and jumping, hoping a safety net is at the bottom.
In my leap, love broke every piece of me;
Love suffocated me.
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 at 7:34 AM UTC
The desperate cling to words
Uplift their hand off the drug
They angle the situation like a friend not a doctor
Words strung together become magic without the wand
Slip on words gentle like a cotton shirt unto my silky conscience
Poems are a cure for my lonely hands
They intertwine in between my crooks and crevices
And cradle me with warmth; put pressure on my skin
I am being touched by multiple fingers
My hair is being stroked like a child
The temples become buttons which give me messages
I write and the blank pages absorb my prose like a pillow in contact with my tears
Warm and damp, how does some other arm wrap around my head to cover my eyes
Making me guess the identity of the muse
The idea revealed, only through endings
When are you complete oh mysterious column *****
You are like a dig
Messages reveal themselves like reincarnated Cleopatra
Lighted skies
Yellow eyes
Somber face
Silent grin
Over and over I am possessed
And then I forget that it's merely a dance
On acres of text
Fingers are conducting
What's next, what's next, what's next
Singular creatures hope for the rest
Until finally
My silky conscience revealing beneath
Baring it's teeth
A moon-shaped vision covered my listlessness
My acceptance of such expatriate education
Helps me to notice every expression
Hoping for that half, that a love fluent in my language can only be born to understand it
Deciphering reasons to accept the challenge of difficulty
It is known, that anything worth anything is a result of the toil
Your character appears to be rubies
You voice out your words like it's written in blood
Renting out your heart for the owning of mine
Aug 22, 2017
Aug 22, 2017 at 1:35 PM UTC