Best Immigrating Poems
My father had been out of work for way too long.
At night, I often heard him and mom weep
Food was scant, but love was strong.
As was that hunger pain when I lay to sleep.
My little brother was too young to understand.
Still a babe in arms, he brought our only smiles.
I loved to play with him and hold his tiny hand.
It seemed to take away the hurt from life trials.
Then, one-day dad came home all excited.
He was talking so fast, grinning from ear to ear.
He said that our future was well fated.
That we were in for adventure was clear.
It was that new ocean liner, the Titanic.
Dad had been hired for the maiden voyage.
We were going along as his sidekick.
A family destined for American homage.
In just five days we boarded that ship.
Immigrating was a dream come true.
Accommodations would be a hardship.
But it was worth opportunities…new.
Dad worked as a scullion in the restaurant.
We were housed on the lower deck.
It was a very crowded lodgment.
We stayed together until the shipwreck.
Sirens were screeching people screaming.
We could not find dad anywhere.
Was he locked up as a cageling?
Could it be true; was he trapped down there?
Lifeboats were being lowered.
Mom held my brother, crying.
Dad must be somewhere cloistered.
We all feared a dreadful dying.
Someone put me in a lifeboat.
I reached for mom as it descended.
The Titanic was still afloat.
But my family separated.
The water was freezing.
I had forgotten my coat.
People crying, sniffling, and sneezing.
The lifeboat soon became an iceboat.
Within a few hours, death began.
Shivering, I crawled beneath two corpses.
A young girl destined to live without her clan.
Hidden from polar breezes.
That was the last time I saw my mother.
My mind holds the image clearly.
She, calling for dad, was cuddling brother.
Oh, how I loved my family dearly.
When rescuers finally arrived.
I was the only one alive in the lifeboat.
Beneath those bodies, I survived.
Then, I was wrapped in a warm coat.
I never did see America.
I was sent to an orphanage back home.
Life had dealt a great trauma.
Forever had sunken in the ocean's foam.
© April 9, 2012
Dane Ann Smith-Johnsen
Written for Poetry Soup Member Contest: My heart will go on and on.... Free Poetry
Sponsor Tracie ~*~ Indigo Dreamweaver
Why you seem sad?
How is for this moon to sadden?
Why pearls pour down from your eyes?
As the raindrops
What is the secret?
What is the matter?
What is the avail of sadness?
And we are hanging in ropes of the sin
And between rope and gallows
An orphan friendship
And between me and you
A new world
Between my eyelash and tears
Painful memories
My lady!
Between city and city
Long distances
Thousand barriers
Thousand souls immigrating
Thousand temples
Thousand priests
Thousand knights
Thousand nights
Thousand devils
And between heart and heart
Farness and yearning
Thousand mercies
Thousand pulses
Thousand love
Thousand addresses
Thousand words
Thousand lies
Thousand candles
And between eye and eye
Hidden Language and dialogues
Thousand tears
Thousand roses
Thousand tones
Thousand winks
Thousand whispers
Thousand touches
Thousand kisses
But between soul and body
One life.............One life.....
Honey!
Who turns off this world?
And makes my destiny between your hands
If you are a part of my dreams
I will never dream
You are all dreams
These are my heart windows
Are opened for scepter
Are opened for love and dreams
And the dreams are crying every year
Oh. the virgin!
How the dreams cry?
How the foam of the sea and shy sands cry?
And the gulls are immigrating every year
Are your eyes similar to lilies?
Who turns off the world?
And plants a candle over rainbow
To live in a world of illusion
Faraway from the purple?
Yuval Noah Harari
suggests that Nationalism's
Big Three Nemeses are fear of
nuclear holocaust,
degenerative climate trends,
and Business As Usual disruptions
of eco-politically salvific technology.
When I first read this list
of his global Three,
the one that stood out
at least for me,
to potentially
break through our tendency
to see through lenses
nationalistically
is Earth's great climate pathology.
Still,
all three are LeftBrain dominant,
StraightWhiteMale privileged,
Patriarchal-Capitalist nationalistic systems
of scientific reductive-rooted secularism
and defensive
extractive-infested
militarism.
Aside from a home habitat
in WholeEarth Crisis,
extinguishing all hope
of future peace health
is our cooperative multicultural wealth
regeneration,
our ability to distinguish
which of these three
is most transparently
exploitive and disempowering
our SunShine EcoSystem,
To dialogically determine
which is most polyculturally vulnerable
to inflaming
already repressive Patriarchal/Capitalism,
Which is most unenlightened
and monotheistically RightWing
StraightWhiteMale
LeftBrain dominant
May also be the unholy Fascist fascinated
demonizing ecowomanist healthy choice
and Earth as sacred Goddess
panentheistically denying,
Holy Nature/Spirit indigenous defying,
climatically degenerative Nationalism, yes,
but also, more fundamentally dualistic,
AnthroSupremacism
over ecofeminist healthy wealth
of fertile sacred Earth
Where monoculturing climate "change"
may become most easily defined
by Yanged out RightWing predation
fueled by a competitive economy
of hierarchical
from-above produced
and massively media marketed scarcity,
rather than from-within
ecological healthy robust wealth integrity.
Then again,
I could also see win/win opportunity
for health as wealthy polycultural activity
in co-immigrating away from global fear
of nuclear nationalistic hostility
Emigrating toward global polypathic thrival
post-secularizing revival
of sacredly uniting cooperativity
principles of Eartherapeutic Energy
as healthy integral international democracy,
NonViolent Communication fueled
by
and for
and with Whole
Holistic
Holy EarthTribal
win/win systemic
authentic
intricate
exquisite sacred global integrity.
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.
The hands grabbing you tightly will never go unlock
the thoughts of losing you, liquefy the reasons of my living
my competitions of your love has strengthen
but my heart’s stamina's now much more than that of
immigrating birds, flying through thousands of miles.
I’m alive solely to cast my existence
under the shadow of your happiness.
I’ve grown to be able to see through
the little window of your inside world
even when covered with heavily painted curtains.
I’m learned just to perfect the act of treating you right
and I was born to passionately take good care of you.
The free gravitational pull from the gigantic water fall
dignifies pleasure to combat risk, hands down.
Sitting on the already moving roller coaster
despite being dynamic on uniquely thin ropes,
create risky uncertainties, galvanizing the enjoyment.
Such is the power of your love, scanned out of your heart.
A soul I’ve found, a heart I’ve captured
and such a lovely body I’ve personally trade-marked
confined into one being is a treasure I will never let go.
What are your most winterish
critical trauma events
in these most recent
three millennia?
Why
just my traumas?
Why not their corresponsive
therapies
for restoring EarthJustice?
Please go on
and on
questioning my questions
seemingly without end,
like an arctic wind-blown
starless night
in eternally restless January.
As you say,
and, but for this grand analogy,
you would pay dearly
for your unsprung youth,
Back in pre-colonial daze
of sacred tribal glad,
mostly naked clad
reunions
Fall harvests produced fertile gratitude,
more of a positive
win/win attitude.
In those last warm and golden times
of nature nighttime naivete
some Governor,
a Wise Elder, perhaps
No matter how Patriarchal,
would deep dream
to set defenses against
each sacred Other
Yet pantheistically inclusive Mother Earth
could not feel ripe
or right, apart
Summer fullness
and winter dormant absence
fail to positively correlate
Earth's spirited spring minds
and physical womb-falling bodies
with metaphysical,
sacred bipartisan,
deeply thoughtful
yet hibernating
frustrated feelings
failing to confluently
and competently understand
Communicating
and excommunicating
across seasons
and present seas
of sacred vulnerable immigration
integration
creolization,
followed by thoughtfully transparent
slow-grown emigrant sacred status
rooted in wisdom
and freedom to grow copassions,
not mere freedom from
some other kindless
kingdom
Immigrating/Emigrating EarthTribes
exhaling summer's sway
away
migrating winter's WombDream play
back in to sacred circling
and recycling stay.
Thanks for that,
Aunt Eartha.
Sounds like less of a summery answer
and more of a deep wintering question.
Yes, my dear,
and what does winter taste
and look
and feel like?
Restoring Earth's
not-quite-so-everlasting
seemingly endless
cold white privilege,
Thawing into
more spring/fall balance,
green/blue global
hibernating
matriarchal,
yet apparently dormant,
sacred honed ecologists.
Sorry, Aunt Eartha,
drifting off,
wandering in winter wonder
EcoTherapy, once around again,
regenerating global
GoldenPlaying Peace
Within this silent wintered star's
bright prolific night.
What's the problem with homelessness,
other than the violence from which it comes
and toward which it further travels?
Why not ignore
and grow tolerance
for the inevitability of caravans
of sojourners
on pilgrimage
toward mirages
of Uniting Promised Lands?
I have more immediately pressing
everyday problems--
trimming my nails,
drying the laundry
on a rainy non-clothesline day,
raking the leaves,
mowing the lawn,
sweeping the front porch
to invite the occasional visitor,
harvesting the squash,
pulling voracious weeds,
cleaning, the gutters, rain-barrels, the truck...
feeding the birds, the kids, the garden soil...
clothing the hungry barefoot kids,
doing my nails...
Did I say that one already?
These are my at-risk immigrating priorities,
my everyday interdependent pilgrims,
projects longing for a more integral,
mutually inviting,
loving,
enchanting,
even possibly ecstatic?,
climaxing! healthy purpose.
Lawn and leaves, con-joined
birds and children, singing back and forth
wet porches and clothes
and dirty rain-barrels and gutters,
tired and depressed
worn-out
sleep-deprived visitors
right here at my doorstep
sharing our cooperatively therapeutic planet
with whatever climate health remains
before traveling further
regenerative and degenerative pilgrimages
of decomposing choice,
no alternative
homeless choicelessness.
Homelessness is too big
to therapeutically share alone.
I am too small to host
and everyday depressing
compressed to receive,
to accept with impressed renewing eyes
longing for healthy integrity
throughout my extensive habitat
of deeply
cooperatively owned responsibilities
to co-produce common healthy outcomes
for ourselves
and all our caravans,
domestic
and wildly foreign,
Internal climate pilgrimage toward integrity with beauty
and external co-empathic journeys
into wayfare homelessness,
eco-sublimation,
timeless Earth enchanting trusts
and disenchanting mistrusts
while cleaning my nails
while washing the truck.
"Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain."
----------
Tales from ancestral lore decree
How journeys prompt discovery.
Evolving visions, sacred themes,
Beckoned onward those hopes and dreams:
One land became that promised place
Undaunted seekers could embrace -
No plight would prove too burdensome
That might deny wayfarers from
Immigrating to obtain
Freedoms that they could thus sustain.
Unbowed by struggles they would face
Long suffered souls these tests embraced;
Long wandered wards from tumults fought
Advancing quests for futures sought.
Now, praise their spirit rightly famed -
Defend those rights so nobly gained.
That kid at eleven before his first kiss
is the kid that I really, really miss.
Every kid thereafter
was more tears than laughter,
molding the world-weary cynic that this old man now is.
What a wonderful day it was
When no one was watching the stars but us
Holding hands under the shiny sky
Watching the stars in each others eyes
You made me love my life
I even wanted to become your wife
You became the reason of my happiness
You got me out of all my stress
But important things took you away
You said it won’t take you more than a few days
Please, do hurry and come back my dear
Cause these days are passing like years
Telling my secrets to the rain
Telling without him I'm going insane
Sending letters with birds that are immigrating
Sending kisses with spring’s soft wind
Tell him stars how much I want to be with him
Tell him about him are all my dreams
Guard him angels from any harm and enemy
You know how much he means to me
Tell me moon how is he doing?
Is he happy or in need of anything?
Bring me his news every night
Don’t let me sleep feeling not all right
Let me know sun when he comes home
I'm sick of being all alone
Wake me up with a beam
Then let me tell how much I've missed him
Form:
Ask nurturers,
parents,
librarians,
nurses,
maybe even a doctor or two,
What's required for my long-term commitment
to re-invest
for necessary long-term resilience?
The answer,
health,
seems sufficient
and yet not the sacred purpose
for resonating my optimally wealthy life.
My purpose is growing healthier ecosystemic life
invites finding meaning through EarthCentric ZeroZone healing
resilient cooperative climates,
now increasingly volatile while desecrating
degenerating dissonance
through over-investment in automated comforts
and defensive apart-ness contracts
and absence of liberally loving WinWin contacts
at LoseLose unacceptable prices
of long-term automated consumer trends
decaying while grabbing remnants of shattered competing markets,
especially labor
and water
and soil
and entertaining soul root nutritional systems,
Rather than re-investing in cooperative love,
grace at home,
positive karma abroad
energy democracy,
resonant resilience,
polyphonic paths toward sacred health
rather than more competing climate of business apartheid pathology.
If we go back far enough
on any current survivor's family tree
we will find intersections of multicultural love
immigrating on business
and/or involuntary survival pilgrimages
in caravans of naked hope
for better,
more resiliently healthy
interdependent futures.
Up and away we are
In v’ formation
The stronger are our flight path
The mercury on it's all time lowest
On the thermometer
We lost so many friends along the way
Flying in close situations
Immigrating brings good vibrations
No matter what the weather
We are Swallows Forever
We are bathing in the sun
High above on a wire
If I say that we don't have fun
Then you know I am a liar
Because when we cruise through the sky
Then you will wish you could fly
We sneak past the bird watchers
But they always recognise our call
We pull off a disappearing act in the fall
So that we don't lurk too long
To be a stuffed up trophy
On some hunter's Wall
We are Swallows Forever
No matter what the weather
Power's purpose is shared authority
within a responsive range
of freedom with other responsible neighbors
other reasonable,
non-paranoid,
non-egocentric,
non-violent people
other well-fed and watered animals
other nurturing root systems
empowered by other nutritional generations now past
our future integrity potential
power of Here/Now co-authority.
And with each authoritative eco-mission
steps responsible passion
co-responsive left foot, then right,
left...
slow revolutionary emigrating eco-normic-logic
with immigrating ego responses
to what travels between free authority to speak
and bonded responsibility to listen
As issues prioritize
spawn and nurture
double-binding patriarchal missions
with matriarchal passion
wombing EarthTribe re-issues,
challenges for yet unbalanced integrity
of positive/negative energy
Health of all remaining sacred generations
now with burning and decaying secular regenerations
of EarthTribe power's co-responsible passions
Especially gratitude for ego's homeless distress
Authority to raise
and nourish
Eco's responsive nest.
Aliens have recently taken over my mind
They're a friendly lot, they are
Obsessed by the pretty women we have
And the love of our fancy cars
They say they're thinking of immigrating
Warned them it's not a bed of roses
Got a bunch of yahoos running the show
Amazing the problems it poses
Many of us live in the lap of luxury
Others don't have enough to eat
Power trips are the crux of our problem
We must have servants at our feet
So the choice is yours my alien friends
Don't know what it's like back home
Might think of checking out other planets
This is not the best one known