Nativism, I just learned about this new word today.
When you were a kid you stood up against the wall and they
measured you. But nobody knew, least of all you,
about what you felt in your own heart, unless you were loved.
A native where ever you were. And just hoping to grow,
taller.
The winds through the trees where I grew up in Michigan make
a sound, and I always thought that that sound gave me the ability
to care about the land and all people no matter where they might
come from.
What was the poet, Robert Frost,
who found it as a habit to sing about,
what became the most silently un-stitched
in what was once claimed to be a new world
and free
half of thee
the only part part filled with deep regret
and then, there is my own
Peace!
The Lady has a tear in her eye
It douses the flame of her torch
Whose sparks perish on her lifeless gown
Its greenery scarred, now a desolate brown
As the specter of nativism stalks her land
As strangers are branded 'undesirable,' and banned --
Recall what made America so great (again)
Was the raw energy of newcomers way back when
our floodgates opened wide to receive the tide
of ill-clothed, ill-fed dreamers, possessed of pride
to come here, and scratch and claw their way to our table,
to prove their worth, to show that they were able
to compete and make it in this Promised Land --
from which their spiritual descendants are now to be banned
It in now dark.
Talking of exposed genitalia
I go into a terrible shock.
A compulsive deceit
takes hold of the attention.
The candle burns me inside.
Between eyes
a *chakra uncoils, like a Naja.
Strikes ! You are stricken-
with a bulbar palsy.
No haemorrhage. A purple venom
spreads in the whole nativism.
Voices move in half-lit corridor.
The doors do not lead to rooms.
All exits disappear.
A chandelier crashes. You
are awakened from a deep slumber.
A poem is born.
*In Indian thought a chakra is the center of spiritual power in the
human body. They are seven in numbers.
Satish Verma
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