Poems

(Don’t) Keep Your Distance

I know about this,
this dark stillness illuminated 
only by a single streetlight.
orange glow over everything
and we try
to forget
that we ever cared.

I know about this, 
this quiet loneliness surrounded
by unending pavement.
dotted lines marking the way
to nowhere
just like
every other time before.

But
rewind, lighting fast, 
because this hasn’t happened
yet

Today is the beginning, 
shy smiles across the room
before we know anything
and I want to tell you,
I am a prophet and love
always hurts in the end but please,
please don’t
keep your distance.

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Eve Of Bittersweet

I’m leaving my bags packed
just in case I need to run away
but I won’t tell you that – it’s easier
if you never have to know
about impermanent.

The demons sound like prophets 
now, and I’m living out
every word they speak in slow
motion, suitcase handle in my fingers
like a lifeline to freedom.

Do you know what I mean
when I say I don’t want to 
be alone?

I have traveled before
and I am not afraid
of losing myself to it, I’m 
not afraid of drowning in it.
No, it is breathing that
takes all the work; staying
that is so hard for me.

I will tell you a secret.
Sometimes, the airplane seats
feel like home, and I don’t 
want to ever leave them, sometimes
you aren’t worth unpacking my 
bags for and I’m not sorry, sometimes
I think drowning
would be easier.

You’re yelling, yelling 
that my life is not my own
that there is a value on it
and I’m wasting the currency, 
my life is not my own and I must
keep my hands off it.

Do you know what I mean
when I say I don’t want to
be alone?

Except
I don’t say it.

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

If I Could Change I Would – Spoken Word

by Ghanaperu

If I could change I would, 
if I could take back all the pain I would 
I’m tired 
of being a TCK.

Does that make me a traitor?

I’m tired of tracing my names
into walls to prove I was there, 
tired of learning faces and names 
that won’t remember me in a year, tired 
of swallowing down foreign languages 
and cultures and always 
setting myself aside. 
(Who even is 
myself? )

I’m tired of the goodbyes I never say, 
tired of walking lost in the crowd, tired
of being noticed and being different and 
sleeping in a different bed every month.
I’m tired of being the outsider and tired of 
pretending I’m not.
I’m tired of watching the road splay out 
behind me
and knowing it’s all that’s ahead, too.

I’m tired of being a TCK and I 
just wanna go home.
For a litle while?
Can I relax and breathe and be loved as
myself, be a permanent something?

But the only homes I’ve ever known are
scattered across the globe, 
impossible
and my identity is carved into my soul,
undeniable

home is a lie
and belonging is a lie
and everything I’ve ever dreamed 
of is a lie and so I sing myself to sleep
with lies and pretend I believe them or maybe
I pretend I don’t – I can’t tell anymore and all I 
know is everyone I have ever met is a liar and I’ve 
been told too many lies to ever believe anything again
and – God! God, I’m tired of lying.

I went to church today and sat in a 
red plastic chair
while at the whiteboard in the corner
the TCKs clustered, markers bleeding onto
their hands while they all wrote their names
and I wanted to tell them
it doesn’t matter and it’s a lie you
were never here

I’m tired of being a TCK,
Tired of tracing my name into walls
to prove I existed
but mostly,
I’m tired of lying

By CulTuremiKs, ago

All The Light We Cannot See

It’s time again, time to 
step out of one world into
another, and we are seasoned
travelers by now.
Gathering up our passports,
charging cords, exchanged currency,
luggage tags, and pens for immigration…
we know how to do this.

So I stand in yet another line,
a nylon strap tugging on my shoulder,
new sneakers rubbing on new socks,
with the echoes of “goodbye” still
ringing in my ears and my heart and
I remember that
If your same blood doesn’t run 
in the arms and legs of the person you’re 
next to, you can’t 
trust anything.

After all, no one else
ever stays.

Here we go again…
my sister nudges me to move
forward and my brother steps 
off the edge of grounded concrete
and my parents murmur about
forgotten things one last time.
We know how to do this.

Eleven hours later all the light
we cannot see rises with the sun behind us
above a country we no longer belong
to, but we link arms – united against 
this brand new world to navigate.

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

They Say Africa

​They say Africa is
A permanent thing,
That you can leave it behind but
It won’t leave
You behind
I don’t know if that’s true

They say Africa is
Always accepting,
Open-armed to welcome
Even the ones who’ve been gone
The longest
I don’t know if that’s true

They say Africa is
Undeniable in your blood,
That it cannot be forgotten,
That children of Africa
Can only grow up to be Africans
No matter how life goes

I was a child of Africa.
The language is slow on my tongue now,
And culture comes hesitantly, in bursts
Of memory that are ashamed of their weakness
In the safety of my home I am still
African but outside I have forgotten it all…

Africa, you promised to be permanent!
Africa, I promised to be always yours,
With the red dust of the village running
Through my veins until I die but
Memory is hard.

They say Africa is
Permanent, that it
Will not forget you even if
You cannot remember but
I guess skin colour was always
The dividing line.

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

For Africa

It is time now
To write
All the words I have been saving up
For such a time as this
I didn’t know they were there until now, but
It’s time

I would have thought that
This would be
A poem of an African,
A heart mired in the dark continent
Writing with all the pent-up longing
Of a people suppressed
But
It’s not.

There are those who write about Africa
From without,
Gathering together the images of starvation
And poverty and beauty to
Present us with a people of natural savagery
I am not like them.

There are those who write of Africa
From within, breathing
Out the dusty promise of better
Things to come for those who hold onto
Native pride
I am not like them.

I am writing of Africa
As a denizen, a foreigner who has seen.
Africa has made me who I am and when
I close my eyes I can still see Vli Falls misting on the
Mountain and Da Vise squinting up at the sky looking
For rain and Asigame in a cacophony of noise
Surrounding me.
Those things will never be lost.

But
I don’t belong there
Anymore

So I would have always thought
This poem would be
Written in the heart of an African
But I am five years away now and
I have discovered my blood runs red
Rather than Ghanaian.
I’m a citizen of the world and I can’t
Be constrained to any singular land
So
This is a poem to say
Africa, I am always yours but never
Yours alone
And I’m sorry.

Will you take my words
All the same?

I want to say
Thank you
Thank you to the bright blue sky at
Mr. Gold’s house and the grey-blue of Helekpe
Thank you to the green carpet grass of the
Coca-cola house in Ho and
Thank you to the green walls at Efo Dela’s house
Thank you to orange sunsets above a red dirt road
And pink sunrises driving through Pilo Town
Thank you to grey toll tickets and yellow
MTN buildings, to purple kente cloth and
Black mud.

Thank you to the colours of Africa that shine
Dusty and vibrant to weave a pattern through
All of childhood…though I crossed continents
The airport always had white tile floors when I
Returned and I
Counted on that

So in my dreams the line of dancers stomp
Their feet through the dust
With coloured cloths and white handkerchiefs
Swinging and I
Know all the words to the songs
Because the rhythm of the drums
Is my heartbeat

Africa, I will always be yours
I promise

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

White Sand, White Skin, and African Friends

There was sand beneath
my feet, between my fingers,
slipping down through my hair,
dusting across my face.

She screamed, laughed, 
danced frantically away from
the edge of the sea-salt, 
terrified of the vast unknown.

Afterwards, we sat in the 
breeze and slurped warm
soda, dragging our fingers
through the sand on the 
wooden bench, pretending
we both belonged there; but
I was the only one who burned.

Years later, I stood at the edge
of the eternal sea, watched the
sun set, sliding beneath the water.
I imagined riding a boat, sailing
six thousand miles to the other 
edge, leaping off and finding her
still there, laughing hysterically.

It is always me
and only me
who burns – 
my skin, my friends
my history, my
everything

by Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago