To my home town I pledge to my soul
To alway return to thee, my sun only set in thee
Blossom show me and brighten thou smile
Chipping and rushing is thou beautiful court
Laughter ,harmony is thou strength together we dance
In war,in cry and in ceremony
A smile in sorrow if thou goest down
But fight and struggle to rise again
Training and playing with those of our future
To love thee,and dance in merry
A dance in sorrow and never letting go never ever
When the future of the morrow stand together with the past of yesterday
We make a change
We rise and never fall even if we stumble we stand straight again like the sun.
It is not where you have been,
or the color of your skin,
that determines your real worth.
God loved you before your birth!
So…be still, listen and know:
what life will to you, now show,
and wherever hence will trod,
He is with you…Go with God.
- by Darrell Simmerman © 2025
Where is room for sublime
in Trump-Modi era
if we talk about
grief, trauma, social justice
liberation, health, job
happiness in a culture
of divide and rule through
rightward extremism?
comics of history
in lanes and bylanes
search lingams for new world
threat murals of mutiny
recreating new forms
unearthly light and space
in old tales sacred for
visions of heritage
I don’t share their tangerine
nor stream in their landscape
even if I’m consumed
in blankness of fire or flood
Hand-to-hand we pass things on,
Elders leave long lasting memories
Imagining future generations nurturing the family bonds.
Records kept meticulously as history
Living long with ancestral pride.
Offspring valuing roots and heritage.
Official milestones as well as questionable stories
Marking time in the continuity of life.
AP: 3rd place 2026, Honorable Mention 2026
The slithering winds passed through my ears,
While hounds of cars and bikes were passing by,
Like a pilgrimage of sheep, heading towards somewhere,
There was smoke and dust in the air,
Intoxicating me into its thin layers,
For a moment, I was alone. I can smell the rotten buildings
Which they call heritage,
A dome stood in front of me, it was almost fifty feet high,
It was on the corner of a building, built like a Colosseum,
Showing symmetry on its rounded side, the windows were many,
Yet I suffocated seeing it,
The tall, pale columns of Corinth and Ionia,
I was petrified, I don’t know why.
The grey atmosphere seemed terrible for humans.
Trees black, sky grey, so the tall buildings were,
Suddenly, I was in the traffic, water gushing from a street tap,
There were horns blowing all around,
Soon I reached the bridge and it was infested by Devnagari,
The yellow Ganges flows beneath it,
ships were busy, so everyone was,
It was not the first time leaving the city,
But it felt so.
I paid the driver upon reaching the station, and stopped thinking much.
Victimized, but not a victim
Never charged, but always blamed
I can hear them maledicting
But I cannot feel ashamed
Cause my guilt is just a nation
Means I’m carrying within
The inherited frustration
Of the other people’s sin
Funny how it feels unfair
And ridiculously sad
To be someone but nowhere
To be no one but not dead
I feel sorry for the angels
Cosmic managers of ours
Sorry for the lack of changes
Broken trees and faded flowers
Please don’t take it as complaint
Just admit that I’m aware
If it matters - I can wait
And I will, for better share.
I want to stand on the black scalp of Pico do Fogo,
Where the earth smokes cigarettes with the sky.
Not for the view,
but for the vibration;
To feel the heat that cooked my grandfather’s name.
They say the vines there drink ash instead of water,
Birthing a wine that tastes like sulfur and secrets.
I need to peel off my clothes, my degrees, my Spanish,
And lay naked on that dark, magnetic grit,
Until the iron in the soil speaks to the iron in my blood.
Cape Verde is not just islands;
it is punctuation In the middle of the Atlantic sentence.
I must go where the ground is still being born,
To remind my skin that we are both volcanic,
Both waiting to erupt, both beautiful in the burn.
We’re planting an orchard of trees,
with shade we may never sit beneath,
yet the fruit of our hands will bless future lands,
with a harvest that grows underneath.
The heritage
This has been cold sunshine
We opened the window and saw the sun
lightning up our bed
that pretended to be a lover's den
Meanwhile, in a country called for the time being
Norway, I'm told, when a foreigner gets
a Norwegian passport, he is registered as
a Norwegian
It is said that 21% foreign people reside in
Norway, but with that eccentric way to
Look at who is a Norwegian or not there
might as much 40%
Blood and culture do not matter much anymore
But it will be a sad day when the last Viking
hand in his heritage
Above green fields cane arrows rise,
A host of plumes against blue skies.
As they bloom they bring new life,
Yet echo times of toil and strife.
The arrows proudly lift their heads,
Where generations’ feet have tread.
Growing here is bitter-sweet,
As memory and landscape meet.
With every wave, with every sway,
They whisper tales of yesterday.
Of all that was, and yet may be,
A fleeting hymn to history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
granite roots gripping Pennsylvania-Dutch shale
taught me Schicksal, spun our bloodlines into compass stars~
Stärke whispered through his fractured Fraktur tales
*******************************
Schicksal = German for (fate/destiny); reflects language teaching with genealogical purpose
Stärke = strength in German
Fraktur = a stylized, highly decorative watercolor or watercolor-and-ink painting in the Pennsylvania-German tradition, often bearing elaborate calligraphy and standardized motifs, as birds, tulips, mermaids, and unicorns, and typically appearing on a book page, baptismal certificate or other family record, or merchant's advertisement. (Source: dictionary.com)
To bow my head before oppression
was never written in my genetic code.
To play the slave for a miserable wage,
and pray to the god of those slave-masters
in order to taste the pleasures of prosperity,
is nothing but a nightmare.
If I do not love you,
I will tell you straight in the eyes,
like those independence fighters
born of my genealogical tree.
I hate the hypocrites,
the deceitful, the envious,
the liars, the racists, the traitors,
and those human beings who lie down
beneath the weight of oppression.
I am the expression of a humanity
freed from the burdens
of Western societal conformity.
I despise propriety
when the environment is hostile.
When I suffer,
my demons seize control of the vessel.
I have but one life,
one journey,
one dusk,
before the reaper
comes to harvest my tainted soul.
My allegiance is to Africa,
despite the chaos that has reigned there for centuries.
I will remain bound
to the cradle of humanity
until my final dusk.
From the rising sun in the east
To casted shadows after dark in the west,
Our tribal marked faces show,
A timeless story, aglow.
Seasons come and go,
Hiding shades and dimmed sparks.
Beneath the sprawling swamps,
Cornering meandered mangroves,
Our roots run deep,
Anchored in attires of legacy.
Our heads see without light,
Guided by old wisdom unspoken.
Truth and strength wrap us,
Like leaves hiding the stem,
This binding keeps us to mother earth,
Fatherland, and to each other.
The river Nun whispers
Future tales of our past,
Her ebb and flow carry songs of joy,
Of resilience, of hope.
Wells oiled to bustle with life,
Echoing voices of a southern people united,
Crafting stories with each fishing net,
With each catch and harvest,
With each chant that shakes the air.
We stand with one another,
As trees in a forest,
Strong and steadfast,
Each branch reaching,
Each leaf singing,
Together in harmony,
Brothers and sisters fit to guide,
The new call of the river Nun.
My grandmother's hands
knew things mine have forgotten,
how to make bread rise,
how to hem a dress
so it would last.
She saved everything:
buttons in mason jars,
stories in the space
between stirring and serving,
love in the way she said
my name.
This is what we lose
when we move too fast,
the slow art of remembering,
the patient work
of passing things down.
Her kitchen was a kind of church
where recipes were prayers,
and every meal
a small act of keeping
the world together.
Now, I try to learn
what she never had to teach:
how to make something
with my hands,
how to turn memory
into bread,
into words,
into something
that will feed
the ones who come after.
Each story I tell my daughter
is a vote against forgetting,
a way of saying:
this mattered,
we mattered,
you matter too.
One day I rode my bicycle out to the countryside,
where, the air was still, and trees stood tall in a row.
Their scent, a fragrance I had known long ago,
made me ponder of our fading culture and worried.
Resting on a rock beneath a sprawling tree,
I saw a maiden dressed in ancient garb.
She captivated me and led me to an ancient land
where people welcomed me with open eyes.
The maiden stepped outside,surrounded by friends,
and danced - so enchanting and graceful.
Then an old man clad in robes of old, appeared.
He said, "That maiden is your ancestor, revered,"
But when I woke up, my people stood close by,
and all the vision faded into the sky.
(Third in the Poetry Contest" Write Fourteen Beautiful Lines" sponsored by Constant La France )
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