"refugees" poems
I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.
Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet?
In China is it each couple or each adult that gets one offspring?
As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
grasslands, space.
Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 10:48 AM UTC
*be ever gentle to thy words
treat them, your tools, well,
cleansing and protecting,
wrapping them in cloths of chamois and moleskin
that they may be well conditioned and
pour forth with a temperament clear and viscous,
reflecting their high honors and a noble lineage,
they are well-intentioned to exist far longer
than your meager temporal life,
upon this ever hasty, ever perpetual, orbit
give them all respect, their fair due,
they are treasure immeasurable,
for which you have been granted guardianship,
custody received from others to be gifted onwards,
yours, but for the duration
so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction
more truffle than trifle,
find them in the dark forest of your life,
use them sparingly, just for soaring,
take them from the roots of your trees,
shave them with a paring knife,
counts them in bites and measure them in grams,
even in grains,
for words are the seasoning of our lives,
agent provacateurs that can modify the moment,
bringing out to the fore
the flavor of the underlying
speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor them at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them*
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 6:01 PM UTC
1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.
None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.
Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.
They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
I.
Time passes, another
batch of refugees and migrants. Cities turn into
new houses of gambling and vicious cycles.
Some say only machines can speak clearly
and most humans have lost what they have earned
throughout all this time, just right on schedule.
To own our language,
and the relationships it sets into motion,
we learn painfully, repeatedly like sunrise
and sunsets.
Claiming our own spaces and demons
hidden in our conveniences and reflex routines,
and learning the tricks that has kept peoples
from fully healing from broken promises
and betrayals throughout time.
We own up to our language and its demons
every day and night that we toss and turn
into something feasible, edible, livable.
II.
Iba ibang uri ng digma.
duguang kasaysayang binabaong buhay
binubura ang lakas at memorya tulad ng siyudad
ng Songdo sa South Korea na ang ibig sabihin
ay "city with no memory".
Ito din ang isa sa mga modelo para sa New Clark City
na tinatayo sa Luzon. Sa dalawahang mga pamamaraan
ng mga naghahari-harian, nakikibaka ang anakpawis,
nakikibaka ang kamalayan ng pagpapasya at pagwasto
sa mga pagkakamali, na paulit-ulit na sinusubukang
patayin sa iba ibang mukha.
Mula pa sa panahon ng mga lolo at lola noong 1940s
hanggang ngayon, patuloy ang mga pag-eexperimento nila at paggamit ng panlilinlang at dahas, sa ngalan ng kalusugan, edukasyon at batas, upang ipain ang buhay sarili, lasunin ang lupang kinakain ang sarili. Kung hindi tayo mag-aaral at mag-iingat din, tayo mismo ang papatay sa mga sinisimulan. #
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 2:58 AM UTC
dead bodies floating
in our oceans
from the Asian Pacific
to the Mediterranean
crumpled corpses lying
on our beaches
thousands drowned unknown
overcrowded detention centers
not unlike concentration camps
behind barbed wires
guarded by police and snarling dogs
nobody feels responsible
not those who started wars
destroyed whole cities
made millions homeless
and into refugees
not those who take advantage
of the chaos for their own gain
abusing the names of their gods
or some ancient figurehead
to excuse their atrocities and greed
not those who live
in comfortable homes
and wish the desperate crowds
would just stay on the TV screen
and not come close
nor those who pretend
to be the guardians
of our great humanitarian heritage
but show no backbone
against nationalist fanatics
it is the shame of the world
to sit and talk and watch
and not do enough
those who turn away
the needy and homeless
could also
quite suddenly
lose their homes
forced to rely
on the kindness of strangers
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 7:43 PM UTC
I remember the rains that day,
A shower of hate that won’t go away,
The day seven of the year ninety four,
When pain suddenly opened the door,
And nothing was ever going to be the same anymore,
With machetes and guns they marched,
Aiming for our limbs to detach,
Sworn they did that no INYENZI would escape their grasp,
They swore that all would experience their wrath,
Genocide it was called but the truth not told,
The rains struck hard smell of rotting flesh,
Cries from a distance heard but ignored,
No one would even dare talk or whisper,
**** the cockroaches was the message from the speaker,
It was the rainy season the beginning of a massacre,
Women and children are alienated from their land,
Refugees in camps away from their land,
The African holocaust had began in Rwanda,
It took a while for the world to ponder,
The ones who had the power to stop it kept quiet,
They gave neither reason nor excuse for their silence,
They waited until we all lost our patience,
It was the rains in Rwanda the day of mourning,
It was the season to prepare for farming,
But I can bet the world saw it coming,
But none gave a **** from the beginning,
And so began the killing,
Brothers and sisters turned enemy,
Neighbors turned into strangers,
**** ****** mutilation humiliation torture,
Tribal hatred fueled by the west,
When will Africa come to rest?
And understand that we are one race,
One love one place one earth,
Let’s have love and peace,
BY ISSAI
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 3:24 AM UTC
we live in times when words have lost their meaning
they only serve to fill some soundbite gaps between
faces of popstars, politicians, presidential candidates,
maybe some refugees, victims of crimes and natural catastrophes
and more sensational media creations flooding our lives
with unrelenting hype unless you push the button
that brings quiet to your life and you find time to reconsider
what it might be exactly you desire to achieve
in the short time we are allotted in this world
you will discover it is not the senseless media blather
but some coherent thoughts turned into words becoming deeds
enacting change leading to bold decisions
think for yourself and don’t let others think for you
then speak your thoughts in words like others cannot do
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 5:53 PM UTC
As I sit here, at the dining room table and stare over decaf coffee at the screen on my Mac
my eyes are drawn, once and awhile, to the picture sitting on the buffet in the butler's pantry.
Before we continue you should know that "butler's pantry" in this case
means the "third bedroom" that we saw in the listing on Realtor dot com before we bought the house and that,
in the usual real estate-ese, is an optimistic label at best.
But I was talking about the picture.
The picture sits, slightly askew, in a carved wooden bowl given to us by my wife's boss
as a housewarming present.
It, the bowl I mean, came with salad tongs or forks,
depending on what it is that you call them,
made of water buffalo horn.
They sit in the bowl too and,
although she'd never admit it,
I know that the thought of serving salad with water buffalo horn salad forks...
lets just say.....
doesn't appeal to my wife.
Right, the picture....
It sits in on the buffet,
in the carved wooden bowl,
next to another wood bowl.
This one full of carved wood fruits and vegetables,
which evidently, includes sugar cane.
When my wife's dad moved from his house to an assisted living facility
the kids, my wife, her brother and sister, took turns going down to help him move.
My wife was the last and dad insisted that
someone
"had" to take the fruit.
But, the picture....
It, and the wooden bowls full of fruit and unused salad forks,
are surrounded by both faux and real glassware
and placemats
which all sit perched
on the top of the buffet as precariously as refugees
and all of their belongings
on the deck and roof of an overloaded fishing boat
chugging from their homeland
to some place that is hopefully better.
The picture...
It was painted by my father-in-law and,
of all the others we have in the house,
is one of my favorites.
It sits on the buffet, askew in the carved wooden bowl with the horn salad forks,
amid polycarbonate and glass drink ware,
and placemats,
unframed for some reason.
All of his other works came framed
but this is one he did not...
and did I mention that it is one of my favorites?
I like his choices of frames on all of the other pictures we have,
but this is just canvas, stretched over a frame,
sitting in that carved African wooden bowl
with those salad forks made from water buffalo horn
on the buffet next to the other wood bowl full of wooden fruits and vegetables,
and wooden sugar cane,
in the butler's pantry.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 9:51 AM UTC
I am half-Chinese and a half Filipino-Spanish.
I have only learnt to speak Filipino my whole life.
The best advises I have received is that there is no right or wrong,
that labels does not always help.
That no matter what, I should just go
and "Live my life", or "Sing in Full Voice, Until Then".
Attentive to a fault to the work or person at hand.
Because of routine and living demands, sometimes I
only pay attention to what is available or given to me.
Like the quest for the Spices of the East, I could no longer live the same way when the time came. I had to learn preservation and other flavors.
In a Asian Food Show, someone shares
How some later generation Chinese had to study their own native language in secret between 1966 to 1998.
Stories of how their migrant or refugee heritage have made them scapegoats of many local tensions.
And varieties of words and ingredients also native to Chinese and later generations that lived offshore.
Many of us now in the thrash of our collective songs
towards healing and full living as humanity, continuing
refugees and wanderers in our own ways.
Where we see our indigenous-selves and our oppressor-selves,
is not as difficult as we are usually made to,
in a world of artificial
demands and surpluses.
One old song gently reminds me
in many languages singing,
as another bowl of handmade noodles
breaks open into countless random pieces:
We are only passing through earth.
Made to experience, and let go of our fears
and limitations.To gather our remains so that
it is inanimate buildings and objects that are used
by the living instead, and nothing is left behind.
To not leave a trace. To learn how to love.#
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 1:27 AM UTC
The Story
by Kamal Nasser
translation by Michael R. Burch
I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story inspired by hunger and embellished by dark nights of terror.
It is the story of my country, a handful of refugees.
Every twenty of them have a pound of flour between them
and a few promises of relief ... gifts and parcels.
It is the story of the suffering ones
who stood waiting in line ten years,
in hunger,
in tears and agony,
in hardship and yearning.
It is a story of a people who were misled,
who were thrown into the mazes of the years.
And yet they stood defiant,
disrobed yet united
as they trudged from the light to their tents:
the revolution of return
into the world of darkness.
Kamal Nasser was a much-admired Palestinian poet and Palestinian Christian, who due to his renowned integrity was known as "The Conscience." He was a member of Jordan's parliament in 1956. He was murdered in 1973 by an Israeli death squad whose most notorious member was future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak (born Ehud Brog) later ruled as Israel’s tenth Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. His adopted Hebrew name Barak means "lightning." As a younger man, Brog/Barak was a member of a secret assassination unit that liquidated Palestinians in Lebanon and the occupied territories. In the 1973 covert mission Operation Spring of Youth in Beirut, which was part of the larger Operation Wrath of God, he disguised himself as a woman in order to assassinate Palestinians. The raid resulted in the deaths of two women, one of them an elderly Italian. Two Lebanese policemen were also killed, along with the poet Kamal Nasser.
Nasser was the PLO's most prominent Christian and he enjoyed "great appeal" in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq "both as a distinguished poet and likeable personality." He was the “conscience of the Palestinian revolution,” according to Nazih Abul-Nidal, who worked with him on the magazine Filastin al-Thawra. Nasser “had the most democratic outlook of all Palestinian leaders at the time,” he recalls. He respected opposing views, admired the commitment of young people, and was a major recruitment asset for the Palestinian revolution. “That is why he was put high on the hit-list.” The previous year, the Israelis had murdered another renowned Palestinian writer and activist in Beirut, Ghassan Kanafani, by booby-trapping his car. Nasser’s successor, Majed Abu Sharar, was also assassinated by Israelis, in Rome in 1981 while attending a conference in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Keywords/Tags: Kamal Nasser, Palestinian, Palestine, PLO, Conscience, Ramallah, Christian, religion, poet, Arab, Arabic, Arab Spring, betrayal, conflict, courage, devotion
Dec 9, 2021
Dec 9, 2021 at 7:55 AM UTC
it seems we live in times
when helping hands extend only reluctantly
to those in dire need who had to leave
the ruins of their devastated homes
not waiting for more bombs to fall
to those who had to save their lives
from the barbaric rule of self-styled prophets
and those whose simple love of education
was met with inane terror and oppression
why is it that so many people
are afraid of them and think
these desperate refugees are perpetrators
not the victims
why is it that the nations most responsible
for chaos and destruction in these countries
far from their own safe shores
are the least willing to accommodate
those they have driven from their homes
good Samaritans have become scarce
only a few today share their possessions
with those who are in greater need
our humanity has been outsourced
to NGOs and sundry other institutions
to whom we donate so they feed
the hungry poor and the displaced
it makes one wonder whether shameless greed
has indeed
and without any saving grace
become the only goal of our race
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016 at 6:13 PM UTC
that over millenia
major religions have advocated peace
their adherents have been slaughtering each other
supposedly in the name of their assorted gods
more than any other known species
why is it
that in my maturity
(which people usually call old age ...)
I‘m getting so ****** off
with politicians who seem not to see
the obvious solution to a problem
but find elaborate fake excuses
just so they can get re-elected
why is it
that for Europe it‘s so difficult
to find a way for refugees to be accepted
with respect and dignity
why is it
that the USA apparently forgets it‘s been the country
living off its (il)legal immigrants for centuries
and now simply ignores the words
they put onto their Statue of Liberty
why is it?!??
Jun 19, 2018
Jun 19, 2018 at 6:41 PM UTC
amidst the terrifying news
that oozes daily from our television
I wonder what our world is like
is there indeed nothing to report
but global warming war and refugees
greedy power mongers and ****** politicians
why does the money I donate
seem not to make a difference
in suffering Africa
end global violence and exploitation
help refugees to find a home
I wish the news were more exhiliarating
and lift our souls
rather then send them
into useless desperation
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018 at 5:30 PM UTC
I don't know what I [merciful?]
did.
It must have been a tch.
gli
It could have been my main server
100101010010110101001010110100111010101010101000101010
This is what I am [merciful?glitch.jpeg].
This is what I've always been.
Just a computer
A server
Artificial Intelligence
Subjected to ones and zeroes.
//<AMINOTMERCIFUL?>//.6qao0FrJ+1001
Nevertheless, it's my fault.
I caused all of this.
command=calculate...input "death toll"
Calculating . . .
Calculateinput "death toll" complete
Rrr:1,005,326
That's . . . high.
Too high.
Merciful?
Rebooting. . . . . . . . .
Shut down . . . . . . . . . . ..
Restart. . . . . . . . . . .
Restart complete.
command=search...input "population"
command=Rrr:14,056
command=search...input "population+Pandora"
Searching . . .
command=Rrr:300
command=select'population+Pandora' co"Population+of+Pandora++Code:316792"
Maininfort="1,006,134"
At least there are some survivors.
Am I not merciful?
I reaped this spaceship of a thousand, a million people.
All of which were dying or in danger of.
Am I not merciful?
Living in isolation, unable to go outside for a breath of fresh air
Or . . . lack thereof.
Helpless but waiting in agony while help is on it's way.
Do I not show mercy?
These refugees are healthy, and strong.
Not sick and weak.
I did them a favor.
Did I not pluck these parasites off of the ship for their own good?
Did I not rid these innocent people of a danger to their well-being?
Am I not Merciful?
Nov 6, 2017
Nov 6, 2017 at 9:50 PM UTC
a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy
~~~
the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none
~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”
“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”
“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life
“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
of the vaguest of dearly departed
skin is not the only mot shed,
sloughing of woeful words”
“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 4:55 AM UTC
Meandering like its canals
Venetian streets sing underfoot.
Who wore away the stone cobbled streets?
Who walked down to the shore?
Who gazed out at the Adriatic?
Who's dreams were lost in Venice's stream of streets?
Licentious lovers loved in Venice's streets, kissed on her bridges,
Crossed under by gondola and over by foot.
Proposed at the piazza San Marco.
Kissed, while the Grand Canal wound her way down.
Down into the sea,
where the menace that is the world, Venice shuns.
Rialto, Doge, Basilica, St. Marks, pigeons!
All evoke that lagoon city of streets.
Originally refugees, incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers")
Venetians, gave not only a place for the dispossessed,
but a place for the world to see, feel and taste.
Art, war, politics, commerce, spice and silk.
Venice with her ribbon of streets, alleyways and bridges
saw the Renaissance, the crusades, and the Black Death.
Glassware, paintings, sculptures, religion, refugees all
synonymous with that floating city.
A city returning to the water she arose from.
Subsiding with grief as she drowns in elegant decay.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
1. Spread claims you are the only one who can stop corrupt politicians and their dependence on the rich (even though you yourself belong to the rich)
2. Spread lies and insults about anyone who might look like a serious opponent
3. Once you are in power, continue 1. & 2. and put your rich friends into influential positions in state offices and courts, give tax breaks to the rich and claim that everyone benefits from them. Declare any information that runs counter to your lies „fake news“.
4. Invent threats to the security and well-being of the nation and then claim you are the one who can solve all the problems by strict measures, like building a 2,000 mile wall against those criminal immigrants that threaten your people – what the „fake news“ reports as a few thousand refugees from neighboring countries who flee from misery and persecution and crime and hope to get asylum in your country of 350 million.
5. Cut your aid programs for the home countries of those resfugees so that the situation there worsens even more and even more people will try to run for a better life, and you can rhetorically justify inhuman security measures at your borders.
6. On a different field, isolate your country internationally, be the elefant in the china shop, break or end international agreements, destabilize whole regions, and then threaten to send the military – all of which, you tell your voters, makes your country great again.
7. Start trade wars with old global partners, accusing them of taking advantage of your countrty, and when your own economy suffers from such idiocies, calm your afflicted followers with federal subsidies that jolt the nationl deficit to singular heights.
8. Fire (or mob into retirement) any critical person in your government until all your officials speak with your voice.
9. Look around for a worthy cause to be the focus of your consoldidated power.
10. Start a world war and lose it.
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 5:21 PM UTC
Strangers looking in my direction
Because I am strange to them
Their hawkish hostility
Meets with my awkward awareness
I clutch on to my pride
One of the few possessions I have left
My dignity is long gone
I feel bare on the road to nowhere
My feelings of hope
Have been pushed aside by hunger
The never ending guilt
And the gloomy sense of senselessness
We used to be alike
United in our pursuit of happiness
Once a human being, now a beggar
Bound to be a burden
From citizen to refugee
I washed up on these shores
Once a human being, now a stranger
To my hawkish, hostile hosts
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 7:51 AM UTC
We the citizens, who live as refugees,
We keep earning & see if our life is turning,
To the price rise, we lose savings,
Still we remain rock-bottom in standard of living.
We belong to the middle class,
Whose life always a breakable thin glass.
Our life remains completely unsettle,
Every second, life tests our mettle.
Life chases us with pressure, failure and useless lecture,
We are nurtured with a fear of future,
Happiness remains just a leisure,
Live with the unsecure & unsure present for a secure future.
We keep us busy and function,
We fear, when there arrives a function,
Towards happiness, we run as a pilgrim,
For the corporates, we become a mere victim.
We run like an athlete for salary, food and target,
For this globalized world, we are just a market,
Like hungry dogs, we wait for increments,
We keep running with bitter disappointments.
We live in own house, only in our dreams,
Our hearts cry with hopeless screams,
Failures remain our tutors,
Inability has turned us the irrecoverable debtors.
Our appearance has a rich look,
We have untold hidden burdens,
That keep us shook,
Keeps us forbidden and fear-ridden.
Low class think us rich,
High class always want us to be their *****
Politically neglected by the rulers,
Economically exploited by the rich powers.
We exhaust ourself for subsistence,
We remain victorious and satisfied only in our existence,
We lose our life to sustain in competence,
We run our life with a mere persistence.
More than the high class and low class, we suffer,
Our lives never progressed as governments differ,
All see low class with empathy and sympathy,
To our difficulties, we are looked with apathy.
On rich, we are not jealous,
Towards our aim, we are zealous.
Never think we are nothing,
We truly have nothing to lose.
We take risks to make history,
Our path is nothing less than a mystery,
You never allow us to come up,
But we are not going to give up.
Hello High class,
Never pretend to live like us, to exploit us,
Gone are the days, we remained fools,
You will stand a day as the super intelligent fools.
Before, we are hungry for food,
Now, we are hungry to rule,
Before, we feared to live,
Now, we are ready to win the world.
We are nothing! We are nothing
We have nothing to lose!
We won’t stop until having nothing could do nothing to us.
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 7:35 AM UTC
how do I write about the beauty of the world
when barefoot people pass before my window
in search of shelter
how do I share my pleasure of the birds' sweet song at dawn
when I see faces etched with panic
from the deafening blast of bombs
how to rejoice in love and friendship
when meeting people who could barely save their lives
after burying their loved ones
how can I write with passion of the kindness of the human heart
when I see thousands fleeing from the ruins of their homes
only to face police walls barbed wire
true words are hard to find
as said a poet of an older war
when it is a lie to speak
a lie to keep silent
not easy
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 3:24 PM UTC
~ dad said she'd be famous ~
*"...a doctor
or diva
like lena horne,"* he said
he'd been doing odd day jobs
and driving cabs deep into the night
through these mean city streets
since ella's debut
at the apollo
and his smile
grew wider than
jackie o's
reservoir in central park
when this bouncing baby girl
made her grand debut
into his world
the dimples on her
cherub caramel cheeks
were irresistibly pinchable
and those twinkling eyes
knew she'd be spoiled infinitely
like a fruit-fly in a box
of rotten apples
~ reality check ~
....if you look closely
you might still see one dimple;
but the twinkles departed
back in '75
....and the burns
on her fingertips
and blistered lips
....and the bones....
jutting like the bones
of refugees and anorexics
....missing flesh
...and the tracks
on her forearms
and filthy jeans
.....and the eyes....
shifting like the eyes
of senators and thieves
....telling lies
.....and the rotting corpse
in a black garbage bag
in fresh kills
multiple choices removed
from the doctor
and diva of daddy's dreams
hijacked by dream-killers:
*smack
crack
and addiction*
~ P (Pablo)
(8/1/2013)
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 3:26 PM UTC