Best Emigrants Poems
Dorry's Ridge
Frank Halliwell
In the fading days of summer; in the early afternoon,
We climbed the path that winds to Dorry's Ridge..
Where the crispness of the autumn air fortold a snowfall soon
On the rolling hills beyond the Springtown Bridge.
See the reds and golden yellows of the woods up on the hill
Where the maples stood all summer dressed in green.
Can you feel the breath of winter in the early evening chill
With the north wind stealing down the lake unseen?
Does a sense of wonder fill you, when the wild geese fill the sky
As they start their yearly journey to the south..
And the strung-out chains of emigrants call loudly as they fly
Past the rocky point down by the river's mouth..
And when once more it's silent, and our world is still again,
And our geese have disappeared beyond our view,
I'll lead you down the ridge, along the pathway from our glen,
And wander back along the lake with you.
On Dorry's Ridge the snow lies deep, and up along the hill..
The maples stand forlorn; their branches bare.
The lake lies deep beneath the ice; caught tight in winter's chill
The fox is sleeping soundly in her lair.
But one day soon the spring will come, the land will blossom then,
And life will wake again, as nature planned.
We'll climb the long path to the ridge, returning to our glen,
And watch the geese returning, hand in hand..
o0o
We accept the GREAT Grace of Jesus, works of pure love
So we get eternity and so much else
Does it mean we defend those who steal and hurt others
again and again and again and again (only westerners)
When we suspect Syria used chemical weapons, we do not wait
We bomb the same day (in whose Name? Hubris, not Jesus)
So, let us help other nations prosper, reduce emigrants
And we will not have to return precious artefacts, pay millions in fines
And have courts tell us, "Don't separate refugee children from Moms"
Because we are forgiven much, given much (USA!) and need reminding:
Don't turn refugees as you did Jews in the 1940s from these shores
Or intern Japanese Americans because we went to war against Germany
(But preferred to turn yellow when race matters impinge on humanity)
Race matters .... yes, race matters: even in forgiving, it seems
No, to the question as title to this poem: Let's get real, kinder. Kinda ...
Having the luck of being born into the claws of poverty
Our strength and power cannot carry us to freedom, why?
For like stagnant waters we lay still unwillingly
Knowing that our fate lies in the hands of God.
Every day we sleep with hunger and wake with anger,
And some of us simply pray for death to hasten his call.
Even though the reception there is incomprehensible,
Still, death appears the only way, the remedy.
Although by providence or coincidence unknown,
Some of us have left us behind untold.
Call them money miss road or money found road,
They remain the emigrants of poverty
The immigrants to the cream of society.
And we stay to welcome and accommodate,
Not only those who are born into our world,
But those who had but little stay in the rich world,
As they come rushing like waterfalls,
For now they have a new name, ‘the less privileged.’
The ambitious among us have wishes and dreams,
And strive as we can, the situation remains the same.
But the struggle to achieve is not to end,
For our everyday song is ‘we shall overcome.’
Yet we cannot blame God for our fate, why?
Some who are rich wish they are like us with peace,
And we cannot be here and there at the same time.
Our main focus now is in heaven, the kingdom of God.
For there we shall have rest, wealth, and joy,
All of which here we have not but need much.
Till then, when equilibrium shall prevail,
God, give us this day our daily bread.
Peter Edoziem
The color of its wing is the sign
of freedom. Flew in the paradise
with other emigrants, in my long
reflection the wild pretty swan.
It was a captive for the bad hunters.
Its wing was bloody, it hurt by an
arrow, the sad broken wing. Groaning
of the pain, it fell in a vast lake. It
rained intensely. The tears of the sad
sky kissed its bloody sore. The swan
is in fact the nice country of pride.
I dream its flight again in the sky.
An old man walks the cobbled streets
Of a city he helped create
When he had walked on younger feet
Back so proud and straight
The bog’s of Ireland he left behind
To search for a better life
In a foreign city’s numbing grind
With mind erasing strife
Loneliness ate his homesick heart
And solace he did seek
In bars where he became a part
Of sad emigrants clique
Far too swiftly his life took flight
With only dreams of home
Work filled days and drink filled nights
But always so alone
Cruel age stole the years and strength
As quick as you could blink
Work and home and hope soon went
Only friend now left is drink
So now he walks those cobbled streets
Homeless broke and old
While in his mind old ghosts he greets
Clad in green and white and gold
Drizzled light on stone temple
Irridiscent fetters on the mind
Anthem and prayers feigned humble
Milking memory of the blind
Origin has more truth that cutting knife
Narcism is a self inflated dungeon
Dismantling dreams for the empire's strife
Jingle you the joy of labor hard in us
Uttered platitudes did not stunch the pain
Brimming Caribbean in African dust
Inspiring a longer march away
Leverage for a truer automy than the share
Emigrants take attenuating their dignity
Evicted from reason to eat bread there.
Straight-lined radiance
spiraling gravity's view
Gravity pulls
in search of gratitude,
requited.
Radiance flies toward Exterior Light,
Gravity dances with Interior Night,
A flight of fancy dance.
Radiant birth reaches tender tendrils
toward touch of bright.
Rich embedded birth searches below
with slender stealth
toward Other,
where We become more than One.
Born again in perpetual orgasmic grasp
And release of creolizing nutrients,
sustainable capital,
sensational value,
sacred meaning,
secular learning,
sublime creating
informed ex-forming
immigrating emigrants.
Looking back,
Interior Landscape recalls gravity's reverse,
spiraling toward future flower,
new eyes and ears
raining seeds of actively resilient hope
for Exterior Landscape's ReGenesis.
Seeds spiral down
darkly,
richly rhyming
Earth's PermaCultured Story.
Sublime Spring's buds
Ergodically bloom
Facing blind bliss by Summer's day,
warm wet caress by night
toward falling gratitude
Species' seed prediction:
a wintry night of purgation,
while love unites
depression
oppression
suppression
repressing
what positive impressions
Earth has already harvested
for spiral-limned radiance of Spring.
Straight-lined radiance,
spiraling gravity's view.
Gravity draws
a resonant song of gratitude,
radiantly
resiliently requited.
Winter brims
over bouldered ground
above Rostrevor.
Louring skies meld
blue lough to green forest.
Needling wind keens
through raftered bones,
once homes,
hewn from ancient granite.
Mourne claims her own,
over and over,
defeating generations.
Hasp and staple,
galvanised against the sleekit mist,
defend rude-lintelled doors.
Who comes?
Only ghosts of emigrants,
wraiths of mountainy men
whose quick selves
coaxed poor life
from pale, barren hills
above Rostrevor.
I venture on a falling tide,
my little ship the current rides
down river to the open sea,
from Carrick Roads first to be free.
Anthony Head I hoist the sails
and now the boat leans to its rail
as winds hand grips and gives it course
in the uncertain land-breeze force.
Swiftly I run the green salt road,
where Pilgrim Fathers ships once strode,
Drake set the foreign sailor dread
and Packets news the Empire fed.
The lift and fall of my wood stead
rode on a westerly sea breeze,
sheet in the sails and head her forth
upon this salt sprayed bucking course.
South west away I see the teeth,
the Manacles, that hungry beast
has fed upon the bones of man
since first he ventured the sea,s span.
Now on my bow motioning slow
its great steel marker buoy speaks low,
a mournful lonely elegy.
to all the lives there lost at sea.
I think of tragic emigrants,
set off with hope and confidence
in wooden ships with east set sails,
upon the wind and tides deaths rails.
Not long to think upon these things
as now that wicked wind loud sings,
“Circle about on homeward tack,
let’s test your boat can take you back”.
Now with the sea upon my stern,
it’s time for me my choice to earn,
I surf the hissing chasing green
within whose troughs no land is seen.
A time be sure to keep ones head
as swiftly homeword I am sped,
boat must not turn or those high waves
will swamp us to a watery grave.
But all who love to sail the sea
will tell that such adversity’s
the essence of the great depart
from routine to adventures art.
Close this adventures to its end,
high to view the mariners friend,
atop the cliffs the lighthouse stands
welcoming home to Cornwall’s lands.
Back in the Roads to furl the sails,
to start the engines grumbling wail,
down to Percuil and mooring’s keep,
where boat and I will berth and sleep.
America:
Does the Light Still Shine?
--------
"Freedom of speech,
Freedom to worship,
Freedom from want,
Freedom from fear."
--------
Travelers to this Blessed Land
Had many varied tales to tell;
Emigrants from harsh demands
Beset by woes words can't dispel,
Long suffered tragedies emerge:
Exiles condemned for their beliefs,
Scapegoats who fled a rampant purge,
Survivors who sought war's relief,
Elects reviled for social strains
Deplored as being risky foes
Left homes behind with all to gain
And persevered when tests arose.
Now, citizens with Rights-in-hand
Delivered to this Blessed land.
For happier me,
to healthier me,
with hotness We,
informing relationships
emerge EarthBound sacred
co-invested communions
inter-religiously sacramental.
I do not insist
you share this integral worldview.
Yet, I do recommend
invite
exhort
prophesy
endorse
urgently proclaim
this holistic way,
trusted truth,
and loving life
merging past healthy resonance
toward future wealthy resilience
More clearly EarthTribe's land
of happiness and prosperity
when compared
to secularizing divisions,
perpetual debate
about how to PowerOver
rather than empower with
and within
Without CAPITALIZING EarthMatricide
GenoCidal EcoCides excluding
inclusive EarthMatrimony
Outing Alpha integrity
anticipating love's compassion
for LeftHemisphere verbal
therapeutic MeWe bipartisan conversations
Expressing
impressing Elder RightHemisphere
sacred co-invested feelings
for co-empathic regenerative consciousness
Co-operatively polyphonic
polypathic co-governing
integrity of sacred EarthTribe's communal
bilaterally sacramental
O-Mega Balance Point
Back and forth
exhaling and inhaling
with Alpha's poly-pantheistic
non-zero planetary zone
a Whole Open Organic System
of sacred potential wiki-feelings
Inter-religiously
red/bluegreen co-invested
veins and arteries
immigrants and emigrants
out and inside
transcendent and immanent
mono and polytheistic
yang and yintegral
ego and ecosystemic
co-operating EarthTribe sacraments.
Internal enlightening Awe
with external empowering Wonder
Full happier
and healthier me,
hotness We
co-relationships EarthBound sacred
tempered spaces
transparently inviting
co-invested communions.
I know a man who would be King,
Who, born a fool, wants everything;
When bankrupt, saved by Daddy's dimes!
His penchant, now commit high crimes
And misdemeanors too it seems;
He slithers slowly toward his dreams!
Who cares what constitution says,
He rapes traditions like Cortez.
Accuses 'betters' of his sins,
Has sex with molded mannequins,
But boys or girls (the world gets told?)
Oh no! His worst is hot, not cold.
God smiling when his butt gets spanked
By upscale hookers! Proper thanked!
He loves to usurp Christian laws,
To give world finger, "Just because!"
His Golden Rule's simplicity -
"If it's worthwhile, where's gain for me?
My wall will block new emigrants,
Imprison brats, cram folks in tents.
Who lets me kiss their butt can't win!
For sure, that jerk they call Putin,
He's naked! See? My boots still on,
'Yippee ki yay,' I am 'The DON!' "
What prison hold him as its guest?
To pardon self is now his quest,
No matter how the heat may grow,
His minions fill the air with snow,
He threatens murder to survive,
My God! A year! How still alive?
As summer moves to winter time,
May God forgive man's voting crime.
Long Tooth
June 11, 2018
Poet’s Notes:
To those who would pretend that this poem is
obscene, I beg to differ! This poem contains
widely reported National News (not just the
‘Fake News’ you see mainly on the FOX Channel).
The only real obscenities here are FOX News, the
current political leaders on both sides (who
contrive to block their members from voting their
conscience,) and our foolish president, Donald
Trump. Oh, and please add to that the Russians,
our enemy, who meddled in our election to help
Trump get elected. Now that’s obscene!
Now Paris
Is washing its eyes
With August rain
Paris is now
A woman
A Babylonian bride
Her wedding
Is set on Christmas
I hair trills in Paris
And emigrants cheering
And applauding
To welcome
These eyes of marble
This your day woman
You will hug
Another man
A Parisian
Black-feet
Who does not respect
The rain
In my little house
There are many essays
And poems
Some I do not feel I need
Some are not mine
They are still
Standing up
The way I left them
This morning
The fire place is silent
Like a grand mother
Who knows when she should talk
Too many books
In different languages
Agitated
Like me
Even your journal
As you left it
It still keeping
Its preferred place,
Its blue color
And the smell of your burned desires
The first December snow
Is falling in a rebellious motions,
It is embracing the town’s big avenue
And dancing with the last falling leaves
Against its will
This is not very important
The town is not
My town
I am an emigrant too
Time in my house
Is yellowish
It creates its own dunes
Just to get lost
This is bother my house’s door
Before you left
This town
I draw a plan
To settle and colonized this town
I planed to build
Another Paris
A barbarian one
So you can take me
With your eyes of the Atlas
Through its streets of marble
And to our Andalusia’s house
Then we go
And visit mosques
Churches
And temples
To wash our soul
With the town’s walls
And gates
Now,
And after you left
I burned all the plans
It remain just the town saltiness
And the smell of your burned desires.
Let's go back
back to before oil harvesting
to empower machines
to make stronger and more accurate bullets
for bigger and badder guns,
for fear and anger rifle associations,
for military fully invested
justified war theories
of devolution
degeneration
standing in for
polypathic theories of Yang Revolution
with bilateral EvolvingYin
WinWin non-violent TaoTime.
Are you back there yet?
Before big oil
and big armies
and big enculturing public school miseducation
following monocultural anthropocentric hubris
looking for polyculturally healthier healing,
more robust
resonant
resilient mental health outcomes.
We might have to return
to our earliest healthy happy memories
of childhood EarthWombed care,
sensory learning,
heart and lung and mind bicameral development.
OK,
once we get back to this agrarian economizing EarthTime
and SoulPlace,
What is your highest and best Golden Rule
for Left good healthy deductive wealth use,
ethological nature
theological spirit
ecological
psychological
even therapeutic meaning,
secular-sacred vocational purpose?
Please let me know
if you see and hear restorative ballast
healing retributive ballistics.
Please let us know
if you feel called to support Earth's refugees;
those not so well oiled
of all degenerating species.
To support refugees and emigrants
and immigrants with seeds and plants
and holistic ZeroZone nutritious plans
for ego-eco therapy,
pedagogical healing
and health care education,
restorative justice
and PositivEnergy Democracy,
EarthRights
and growing internal-external Climate Health
by shrinking and starving Climate Pathologies
inside too small egocentric
anthrocentric
to be truly WiseElder Original Intent
of pre-industrial ZeroZones
with universal Yang health
and Unitarian Yin wealth
holonic
holy
harmonic.
Who are you most longing to become?
How we answer this is different for an ancient rooted tree
than for a recent immigrant
searching for a niche of stable self-sufficiency.
Who we already have become together
feels more important to thriving groves of WiseElders
than to adolescent immigrants
actively learning creolizing bilingual skills
still coming together for survival.
So too, offering Sanctuary,
becoming Sanctuary,
inviting bicameral Sanctuary,
is rooted in Green complex nutrients
for feeding,
and warm wet watering
whispering easier
cozier
more accessible nutrients
for everyone--
but especially appreciated
by more recent emigrants
flowing into a new garden of hospitality,
of multicultural cooperation,
of shared cooperative residence
and patterns of safe,
sometimes exciting, new transport
toward healthiest wealth.
A gardener's intent
to both offer and share sanctuary
may provoke well-nurtured gratitude
in a recent annual immigrant,
but a more sleepy and self-satisfied entitlement
in mature seniority of perennials,
Yet, primordially feeling and speaking,
we are all immigrants newly becoming together
with each new dawn,
and determined to cooperatively rest
in grateful dreams
with each renewing dusk.
Who are we most belonging within
by becoming Green Sanctuary
together?
Some guilds of mutual interest
and investment
invite growing a cooperative sanctuary for food,
fuel,
fiber
Other teams choose cooperatively owned and managed shelter,
gardens,
farms,
transporting cars and trucks
and bikes and horses,
Others focus on cooperatively owned and managed soil,
observing that democratically co-invested compost,
like capital,
fertilizes healthy savings in a nutritional bank
for cooperative food constituents.
And so it goes,
whether Republican or Democrat,
Libertarian or Green,
Who we want to become together
is more cooperatively resilient,
more robustly compassionate
and co-empowering,
so less aloof
alone
smug and self-satisfied
about our competitive win/lose economic
and partisan histories of colonization;
When, truth become remembered,
we are all reborn naked emigrants
and needy immigrants.