Welcoming a stranger as a guest
We integrated at once, impressed
These fragments of a lucky break
The genesis of a world we'll make
Pigs' hearts will keep us beating
Fear will not have us retreating
We are the locked doors
inside the house.
A child…in a foreign land.
Where we come from—it's all just sand.
Deserted the desert...
but still feeling tethered
to the place that feels
forever home.
Yet—that place
we can no longer roam.
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Left the home land with legislative laws.
As they contained loads of legality flaws.
The colour of my skin cutting at me like a saw.
No jobs, no work, it was my last straw.
Left the land I knew to go and find more.
Knowing that the Foreign Land would have something better in store.
When I moved—I thought my troubles would be soothed.
But found other trouble,
my persistent presence made the locals grumble.
Looked at as an immigrant,
but every day—
a defendant.
"They are stealing our jobs!"you say.
"They are stealing our wives!"you convey.
You never stopped to think—
That just maybe...
we're trying our best?
Yet...
we will always
be seen as less?
At home,
we've got families to feed,
we've got people who are in need.
But what you fail to understand—
We can't help them...
unless we are in the Foreign Land.
Fear of the Outsider, the interloper, the alien
Is as old as humanity itself.
Xenophobia doesn’t just apply to someone foreign
And “not like us”,
It applies to anyone who may threaten
Our way of life, the status quo, the norm
And way “it’s always been.”
From local bar to climbing crag, surfing beach,
Ghetto corner, and Union shop floor,
The locals, sometimes multigenerational deep,
Tend to claim their turf
With the worst of human qualities;
Fear and loathing
Sublimated into snide ostracism,
Backstabbing gossip and withering looks
If not fully expressed with seething hate
Slander, bullying and assault.
Meanwhile life goes on for the Xeno
Head down, eyes averted, pathways diverted,
While in their heart
They recognize the love their haters have
For their cherished way of life and ground
Is not exclusive
And no different from their own.
(9/6/25)
They're knocking at me door
In the middle of the night
They're knocking at me door
Giving me an awful fright.
They taking me
To a camp where
Ashes fall like black snow.
I'll not be overjoyed
By goose-stepping boys
With boots to their knees, oh hey,
And brown shirts and billy clubs
Cheese grater belly rubs
Coming to take me away.
Life slithers satisfied in the self-made furrow,
I incise in the known terrain for tomorrow.
The journey I waver to take beyond the familiarity,
for the company of kinship is a kind of security.
The challenges of the unknown build impediment,
I strive boldly, but can't cross even being confident.
I may try to change the course of life to win,
but the endeavor I don’t risk to deal with the unseen.
The known roads may veer to uncertainty for sure,
no longer I can travel complacent and secure.
In the unknown territory outside my own domain,
the fear of the indefinite within me will remain.
When I build my own pathway and feel proud,
it will soon be full of nameless crowd.
Strangers will scramble to stay on,
an act of intrusion in private realm I will reckon.
For my mind conditioned to identify what I know,
unsafe and unreliable signals the aliens will show.
In the clutch of xenophobia it will close in distress,
for I am scared of the unfamiliar otherness.
______________
April 29, 2023
Word Chosen : Xenophobia
Contest : Writing Challenge - Words With "X"
Sponsored by : Constance La France
Every evening, I could witness, in my childhood,
Beggars, going from home to home, for daily food;
Fear filtered into my heart, as though from fountains,
I could see, within me, many terror mountains...!
Visits of soothsayers, snake charmers, and vendors,
Magic, jugglery, witchcraft, and comic blenders;
Each one was considered a guest and was well-homed,
Each, as though members, wherever they wanted, roamed...!
Foreign visitors, often those with skins milk-white,
Made my heart pump very fast, increasing my fright;
Men sent on the query of a vivacious kind,
Set blaze, like volcanoes, firing fears in my mind...!
All these, yet, I feel now, had shot up like mushrooms,
Age and experience swept these away like brooms;
Xenophobia is a phase of growth, I learn,
Some humans, yet, in this urn, eternally burn...!!!
28 April 2023
Rhymes Checked At: Rhyme Zone
Syllables Checked At: How Many Syllables
Because our world's too crowded, we fear strangers,
treating foreigners with disdain and contempt.
Yet, xenophobia is fraught with dangers;
laws can help, but the entitled feel exempt.
"Go back to where you came from;" such racial slurs
taunts many minority entrepreneurs.
How easily we tend to forget our roots
and what being a true Christian constitutes.
(Rispetto)
04/28/2023
Writing Challenge - Words with 'X'
Sponsored by: Constance La France
"Xenophobia"... Rhymezone/HowManySyllables
Rispetto
The Rispetto lyric is generally composed of eight hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines. Early on the rhyme scheme was usually abababcc , but ababccdd is now more prominent.
racism's
fraternal twin
rose to
his fever pitch
when the pandemic
hit; reached his
climax.
"Asian hate,"
violence,
commonplace.
victims told...
"go back to China!"
pathetic example
of...
x e n o p h o b i a
(yalto)
"Yalto" is a form invented by yours truly
Lines 1-15: 3,4,2,4,5,3,2,3,2,3,3,5,6,1,5 syllables
Writing Challenge - X words - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Constance La France
Theme of choice: Xenophobia
Date written: 04/28/2023
“Prejudice wears a variety of hats, none of them becoming.”
~ Kevin Ansbro
Is it fear or is it hatred
Of a stranger, the unknown
The premise that the unworthy
Could deprive you of your throne?
Is it feeling self-important
With a right to underrate
Foreign people with behaviour
Prone to sow the seeds of hate?
Selfish, haughty, prejudicial
Are the stickers on your back.
Do your customs and religion
Make you special? What the heck!
-------------------------------------
Published in "Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace"
~ (PoetrySoup) 2026
“Let not narrowness of ego decoy ~
Every delusion, seek, search and destroy”
~ quote by poet
Defined as dislike of foreign races,
xenophobia retards growth of soul,
for we look at outer form of faces
and not God’s light within that makes us whole.
Oh hermit, narrow judgment defaces
our heart, deflecting us from our life’s role,
so let’s look deeper than mind-body form,
invoking by love, a benign bliss storm.
It is not only race, colour or caste
to which our heart reacts with aversion.
Beliefs of others oft leave us aghast;
we pause not to examine their version,
since within our closed minds, the die is cast
and ego fears in clear truth immersion.
Let’s wait not then for the next equinox,
becoming soul centric, here now detox.
28-April-2023
___________
Writing Challenge - Words with 'X' - Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
I feel for next-house Nora
Getting poorer and poorer:
A plant facing stem borer
While she seems a goal scorer
Her idle hours rarer
State of things not fairer...
Nora's younger: Victoria
Is doing well in Pretoria
And her cousin Eugenia
Sure to become engineer ;
In South Africa clever
And there could live forever
No causeless xenophobia
When with host shares her beer...
I feel for striving Nora
Refused loan by rich Dora
Who drives the cleanest Bora
And exudes sparkling aura.
Sorry we say to Nora
Sleeping lightly; no snorer.
What has befell onto us?
What is happening to us?
What are our problems?
Who can answer?
We are Africans.
Africa of great fortune.
We should live as one.
Not as two.
We are ourselves.
Fear, not foreigners,
Irrespective of their race.
We are ourselves.
Our hero's effort must not be sleeveless.
Let's be ourselves.
Egalitarianism must continue.
Africa my Africa.
Tribalism, societal conflicts, interstates' conflicts,
Must stop.
Fear, not foreigners.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Alimi Abdulkabir's Poetry
Who brought us the plague?
"The strangers", they cried - "kill them!"
And the plague just laughed.
- #Haiku
We sow discord,
Yet we're thirsty of peace.
We chant war,
Yet our ears call for euphonia.
Racism infests our world;
Tribalism invades like malaria.
Although we have diverse languages,
With love there is no barrier.
We attack the weak,
And leave them with dysthymia.
We hunt strangers like Tiger,
And replace euphoria with dysphoria.
Oh children of Adam!
We are one family.
Do away with xenophobia,
And put on xenophilia like a regalia
We are Adam's progeny,
But we separate ourselves from each other.
We are no more our brother's keeper;
Like Cain, we are diabolical.
Xenophobia feasts on our heart;
No sympathy for strangers.
We chew hate speech in the home;
We utter hate speech on media.
We look down on other race;
We must have forgotten Pangea.
Superiority complex spawns slavery;
It is psychological.
The disease of the strong is racism;
The disease of the weak is xenophobia.
Shut your door against tribalism,
And seek refuge with xenophilia.
Sub Categories
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