Identity Poems
Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah... Don't leave
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don't leave me pale like the moon!
......
I am
by Ghairo Daniels
I AM
I am that I am
SourceLight within my Innermost Heart
unique fractal of Divinity
ever evolving spiralling ascending
deathless ageless
is my Soul
I am that I am
......
I South Africa Woman am I
by Ghairo Daniels
I SOUTH AFRICA WOMAN AM I
I stand before you on rolling hills
Warts, wrinkles, crevices, oceans
Deserts, floods, strikes, loud laughs
In suffering and sub-atomic joy
Failures and victories
Stencilled on my skin
Wringing luminous blood
......
In A London Drawingroom
by George Eliot
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface & of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung
By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
......
One Shot
by Kara Prince
I’m not made of sugar and spice,
My backbone was not forged by fire,
I am not my father's rage nor my mothers shames.
I don’t do the whole fire and ice.
I am not my ancestors from their funeral pyre,
I am soul, flesh, and bone despite the claims.
This is my first time doing life,
I feel it all, your sticks, your stones, your knife.
I stumble and fall,
but here I am, up despite,
......
The River That Refused to Keep Me
by Oscar Auliq-Ice
There is a river I return to
not because it waits for me,
but because it does not.
It moves with a certainty
I have never possessed—
not hurried, not delayed,
only committed to its direction
without the burden of explanation.
......
Somewhere Between the Last Step and the First Return
by Oscar Auliq-Ice
I live in the pause between answers,
in the soft hesitation
after a question has already been spoken
but before the world decides what it means.
There are days I still wake up
with the instinct to call someone “home,”
and then remember I am the one
who now signs the papers,
pays for the light,
......
The Room Where the Light Forgot Its Name
by Oscar Auliq-Ice
I keep returning to a memory
that will not stay still long enough
to be called truth.
It begins in a corridor of afternoon light—
or maybe it was morning pretending—
and a door half-closed,
as if someone had just stepped out of the world
and forgot to shut the idea of leaving behind them.
......
De Limburgse grond
by Mario Odekerken
De Limburgse grond waaruit ik geboren ben
liet mij groeien,liet mij volharden
tot de mens die ik geworden ben
zij droeg mij zonder woorden
door mijn eerste onzekere adem.
In haar stilte lag een kracht
die ik pas later leerde verstaan
een bedding van tijd,geduldig en onverzettelijk.
Ik leerde er kijken naar de traagheid van het bestaan
......
One Shot
by Kara Prince
I’m not made of sugar and spice,
My backbone was not forged by fire,
I am not my father's rage nor my mothers shames.
I don’t do the whole fire and ice.
I am not my ancestors from their funeral pyre,
I am soul, flesh, and bone despite the claims.
This is my first time doing life,
I feel it all, your sticks, your stones, your knife.
I stumble and fall,
but here I am, up despite,
......
