Long Refugee Poems
Long Refugee Poems. Below are the most popular long Refugee by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Refugee poems by poem length and keyword.
I sit at the edge of the sea,
learning English again—word by word,
a language I once studied in my growing years,
a childhood of remembering and forgetting,
reading once more the questions of roads and names.
I practice the tongue of another land—
chair, table—simple things.
Do you hear my voice trembling like tears,
each word dissolving into Galang’s waves?
If only my hair and beard would stop growing,
so I could forever mistake U and S
for Vi?t and Nam.
This side is the sea,
the far shore is home.
Have you ever heard,
within the vast echo of storms and rain,
my call of longing for you—
sent with the rain from this distant island,
falling over Sài Gòn of our childhood years?
I still read your letters wrong—
ch? ai, ch? ti tangled with i and t?.
Beloved, though we only held hands once,
without even a kiss to remember,
beloved, I never dared to say
when I would return—
and so I forgot the time I ran away.
This side is the sea,
the far shore is home.
With the same longing, each day I wake
as if still holding schoolbooks, chanting vowels.
Still within me flows without end
the echoes of the Huong River, the Ðà River;
still within me rise the C?m Mountains, the Bà Mountains;
the forests forever green like childhood hair.
Still I remember—oh, how I remember—
the friends who told old tales of T? H?i,
dreaming one day to build a corner of sky.
With that same dream, each day I wake
feeling body and mind scatter into foreign waves,
seeing on the sand the ancient heavenly road appear,
seeing on the page a thousand forests bloom,
seeing ten directions become a rain of wordless letters.
---- Phan Tan Hai. Written in Indonesia, 1983
Total estimated casualties, including civilians and Taliban 171,000 to 174,000 all in the cause of a very dubious war, returning Afghanistan to what it was 20 years before, and abandoning some of those who helped and are now likely to be hunted down and executed.
This doesn’t include the injured, physically and mentally.
Is there any cause for any Politician to have any pride in this.
My dangerous journey starts,
No time to dawdle or tarry,
Just a few belongings, reduced
To what I can easily carry.
My life rolled up in a backpack
Slung from one shoulder,
My departure documents tightly
Clasped in a plastic folder.
Walking slowly up this gangway
Into the bowels of this plane
Twenty years of change and hope
After the Taliban’s harsh reign.
Goodbye sere mountainous land
Harsh, severe, it used to be mine,
It’s all behind me now as I sit
Lucky to be on this evacuation line.
Most of my life under occupation,
I can barely remember the Taliban,
A child when they left so I grew
Up in a very different Afghanistan.
A harsh and hasty decision made
Causing many to hesitate and grieve
Before taking the only real decision,
It’s time to pack up and leave.
A life of uncertainty in a new place
Heavens knows where it will be
Only one thing certainly known
We’ll have the status of refugee.
There’s a sense of fear and betrayal
As your occupation finally ends,
The clock starts to turn back as
Our New Dark Age truly descends. .
You have much to answer for
After such a long stay
Just to suddenly decide
To up and walk away.
As you retreat once again
Do you really expect
The rest of the world
To still treat you with respect.
My Constitutional Rights as an American Citizen no longer apply to me.
It's as if I were never ever born in America, My Most Beloved Country.
Thanks to the Bush administration and the administration presently
I have become truly what I can only define as an American Refugee
and I'm not the only one.
There is now over A Million
Suspected Enemy Combatants just like me.
We have all been placed on the government's watch list
because we reserve the right to peacefully protest
and demand answers to our questions regarding the 9/11 tragedy.
Right now, thanks to the Bush administration and the administration currently
the President can order anyone to brake into my home without a warrant literally
and search and seize by whatever means all of my property.
Under authority of the President they can detain me indefinitely
without notifying any of my friends or family,
at any undisclosed location without any legal representation allowable to me.
Did I mention that a warrant they do not need?
I can be tortured but they call it "Enhanced Interrogation"
because again, thanks to the previous Bush administration
president Bush enacted into law
that Suspected Enemy Combatants are not prisoners of war
and not subject to the Geneva Convention.
Perhaps none of the above will ever happen to me
but that doesn't matter because it still could very well come to be.
The bottom line is that many other decent people just like me
have been stripped of their American Constitutional Liberties
and all because we reserve the right to protest our government peacefully
regarding events that preceeded the horrific 9/11 tragedy.
My God given Constitutional Rights have been taken away from me.
I am truly a man without a country, an American Refugee.
Am I the only one who finds this scary?
http://billythekidsters-antisocialclub.ning.com/forum/topics/american-gulag
The world could use more people like Nicholas Winton
Living to the age of one-hundred-six is amazing, but what he did to save hundreds of children from certain death will leave you stunned
A kind compassionate man from England and a stockbroker by trade
As Hitler and his war machine just before the start of world war two were about to start their raids
In Prague a large group of families had gathered in a large campo Winton with the aid of refugee workers was able to get six hundred children to foster families in Great Britain, truly a champ
Not only did he get them out but raised the money to make it happen
To accomplish such a feat a holiday should be named after him to salute what he had done
We should raise our glasses to the people that go out of their way to perform good deeds
We are only as good as our weakest link, let us all reach out to the people in need
I am sure that hundreds of relatives of the children Nicholas saved will do their part to make our world better
Let,'s all make the effort, we can all do it together
They tell them the reality of yesterday is their tomorrow
Save the cries for different versions of sorrow
The world is hash but there is a God who is omnipotent
The world has abundance if they choose to be content
If their dwelling is a square foot, they should think about a refugee
If their bowls are empty they should fast, prayer is free
They traded their votes for hope and empty promises
Their offertory is a subscription enticed with a forebode blessing
They should not question their poverty, for religion extols it
They should not question the system, if they are patriotic
The system was designed for the poor to determine who rules
The system was designed for a few rich to rule over the poor
Their poverty gives the powerful power over them
Their ignorance raises few questions
Their starvation hungers for crumbs
The desperation of the governed inflates the egos of the government
Dwarfing the people into fear, inferiority complex and indoctrination
These are the bars of the gate of the prison of poverty
By Phan Tan Hai
I sit reading a page of history—
the lines leaning, trembling with sorrow;
my eyes sting as I trace each word,
cold smoke rising into my soul.
I clearly see the names of friends
who died and now appear again,
demanding to charge once more with words—
a battle of humans or ghosts.
I see countless question marks
weighing heavily on every page;
a time as sad as smoke
staining the paper yellow-brown.
A time that feels so distant,
yet still chokes me as I read;
my homeland fills my eyes,
ink blurred but never fading.
Head bowed, I walked for ages—
my hair once so green;
as though a hundred lives have passed,
I look back and it is white.
I carefully record each word,
renewing the lines of poetry;
casting a hundred thousand words
to bloom as flowers on the far shore.
Zoya sits, now all alone,
just staring through a window pain
to where a pink magnolia blooms
in someone else's garden.
And all her dacha's winter buds
are crushed and tombed in oil and mud
where tank and track has churned
and soldiers on their backs are burned
and seep her garden soil in blood.
Net curtains dim the window pane
but she can count each passing train
seen through the boundary hedge,
and glimpse each combed
and coiffured head
at eight, and half-past nine, and ten,
as Zoya sits upon a bed
and sees them coming home again
at five from Waterloo.
Her curtains flap with icy blasts
damp cushions lie with shards of glass
and where her gentle cats once basked,
dog packs now run her Kyiv street.
Although the hosts are warm, and kind,
Sweet Zoya is now seventy-nine.
Her smile conceals her inner tears,
her loss of ending peaceful years
sat gazing through her bedroom window,
towards her glowing sunflower fields,
her husband still asleep beside her.
I sat there as yet another
refugee looked at me
and ran me down
with the statement
Your ancestors invaded
Australia your ancestors
invaded New Zealand
yet what a racist statement
what is the difference today
with the refugees coming into
Australia what is the difference
with the refugees coming into
New Zealand
are you not escaping
the problems of your own country
just like our ancestors escaped theirs
my Ancestors where Scottish
wealthy landowners drove thousands
of Scottish people, off the land
thousands of Scottish people
Who had worked the land for centuries
had their land stolen from beneath their feet
"Chieftains became absentee landlords
interested only in the extraction of rents"
Blackfaced sheep were found
to be hardy enough to live
in the harsh conditions Of Scotlands
highlands
Thousands of Scottish people
that had ploughed the fields
and tended the crops
were driven from their homes
and had to face the daunting
sea voyage in cramped and miserable
conditions to face an un-tamed country
where people had no laws
where one wrong step
could destroy a persons life
New Zealand, where the Maori
had the own warriors skills
their own type of martial arts
where the welcome of the Maori
the Harka would scare a football team today
having been driven from their land
We all need food to survive
New Zealand was known as
the cannibal Islands of the South pacific
Now perhaps you want to re-write history
Yes it was your country
you have a right to be proud
of your Ancestors
wars broke out because
both sides did not understand
each other, wars broke out
because of greed, anger, love
but we also have a right
to be proud of our Ancestors
Men and woman going out to face
impossible risks
because they had no choice.
Attributed To Concerned parents
of Traumatized Refugee
Dear Fred and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump...
Posthumous belated tattered letter fragment
recently discovered (liberally sprinkled with
hyperbole (presumed for greater audacious
zealousness), sans accidentally acquired
by yours truly.
Miscellaneous personal item highly valued
when thwarted from auctioneer, whose gently
persuasion collectible merchandise requisitioned,
thence keepsake property perfunctory mandatorily forfeited.
Due compensation from sole male heir (me),
whose long since (resting in eternal
peace) papa suffered degradation,
humiliation and understandable lamentation
as a kid living in Flatbush.
Authorities and expert legal scholars
pieced together what probably comprised
a lengthy epistle rivaling the Epic of
Gilgamesh).
Recollection recounted torturous,
malicious, and flagitious mean spiritedness
visited upon the ambitious, cadaverous, and
timorous body electric high-jinxed introverted male,
whose abstemious, conscientious, and nutritious
dietary regime, could not forestall rigor mortis.
A postscript (purportedly penned prior to
once philosophical pensive poet's papa's passing)
stated that said personage felt bitterness,
disharmonious envious self loathing.
That grownup man known as mine father,
though once upon a time, said recently
anonymous deceased old fogey ironically
registered as an atrocious, cantankerous,
and egregious deplorable high school student.
Also, the author of what constitutes partial
opprobrious litany attests during his
idolatrous, notorious, and semiconscious
Arab zombie school daze.
As another refugee dies
camped along America's southern border
a poor family seeks law and order
In Mexico
(In Mexico)
And the family cries.
They didn't expect to find hatred here
it's another burden that adds to their fear
In Mexico
(In Mexico)
People, don't you understand
these people need a helping hand
or they'll grow to hate America someday
Take a look at who they are
can't you see they've traveled far?
Do we simply turn our backs
and send them on their way.
Well, the world turns
And Latino families with little food or clothes
are stopped at the border, where the hot wind blows
In Mexico
(In Mexico)
And their anger burns
So they start to climb the fence at night
they learn how to sneak
and they learn how to fight
In Mexico
(In Mexico)
Then one night, in desperation
they pay coyotes to smuggle them away
hiding in the trunk of a car
afraid of being caught crossing the Rio Grande
by an ice patrolman with a gun in his hand
But they don't get far
And the family cries
In Mexico
(In Mexico)
And as their dream dies
(In Mexico)
Camped along America's southern border
another poor family seeks law and order
In Mexico
(In Mexico)