Ghanaperu

My Own Car – Spoken Word

by Ghanaperu
My Own Car – Spoken Word
by Ghanaperu

When I was in the village
Somebody asked me, and I don’t remember
Who they were
They asked me
If I had a car.
And I said yes.
Then they asked me if my sister
Had a car.
And I said yes.

And I saw on their face
That it didn’t make sense
And I started to explain
In America, if you don’t have a car
You can’t have a job
And if you don’t have a job
You can’t make money to live.

And they looked at me.
And I looked at them.
And they said
Does your mom have a car.
And I said yes.
And they said
Does your dad have a car.
And I said yes.
And they said
Does every person in your house
Have their own car.
And I thought of all seven of us
And I said yes.

And I wanted to give some explanation
I wanted to say that
This is just normal here
And
Everybody has their own car
I wanted to say
I worked hard for what I have
And I wanted to say
There are people
Who live in this country
Who don’t have a car
People who are poorer
Even than I am
And you know I’m poor
Because I qualify for five different types
Of government assistance but
There are people who have less
Than I do
Who do not have any cars

But I said none of that
I just looked at him
And he looked at me

And I wanted to say
I’m sorry
If I could give you my car I would
If I could trade places with you
I would
If there was some way I could share
All my privilege and benefits
I would
And if there was some way I could trade
My birthright with you
I would
But I can’t

But I said none of that
I just looked at him
And he looked at me
And we didn’t say anything
But I know
The same look I saw in his eyes
That nothing made sense
That he could not imagine
What I was saying
That same look in his eyes
I know is the same look
That people see in my eyes here
Because it doesn’t
It just doesn’t make sense

So I tried to imagine having a car
My car
In the village
I tried to imagine
Driving it to Makeni and going to market
I tried to imagine coming out of market
And putting my groceries in the car
And driving back home
I tried to imagine my sister
Living in the same
House as me
And having her own car
And it just made no sense

It made no sense

And I’m not
Confused
Exactly
I just don’t get how
These worlds can be so different
And how
I can be in both of them
And yet not either

And I just don’t get
What answer I was supposed
To give him
That would ever make sense
Or any answer
I could give him
That he could understand
Because
I couldn’t even find an answer
That I could understand

Yes
I have my own car
And yes
Every person in my house
Has their own car
And no
I don’t know why

Another spoken word poem by Ghanaperu

Check out CulTuremiKs’ YouTube channel!

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Shiloh Phoenix – TCK poems

The Two Are Not Alike
by Shiloh Phoenix

In Maforay tonight
it is raining
pounding splatters on a tin roof
and the dark is warm wet barrels
full of hopeful promises
that we will plant in the garden
tomorrow

In Reading tonight
it is quiet
cracked sidewalks lining houses
and the dark is yellow paned glass
full of cautious doors
that don’t ever open for
strangers

My soul sleeps soaked
in Maforay rainy season

My body breathes blasphemous
in Reading summer heat

and i am nowhere much

{I’m disintegrated tonight, divided between places where I don’t belong.}

I’m still peeling from that sunburn
by Shiloh Phoenix

The tree today is supple and heavy
laden with the weight of too much rain
but where you are the sun is an
Egyptian god, relentless in his dominion

If I can carry this sunburn
across the Sahara skies
could I bring back my hands
cupped full of water?

Life never works the way I
want it to
and neither do you
oh Africa, with your back turned to me

Once I was yours
now I am a lost memory
swinging slowly in these trees
that are not the same at all

{and its a constant reminder that my world is small – small in the millions of miles}

Lost Souls of Africa
by Shiloh Phoenix

“it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you”

I once had a friend
just black enough to be called
n****r by strangers in Alabama
but too white to be mistaken
for Senegalese
She left Cape Town years ago
but she’s still tasting the
warm salt of Africa’s ocean
in her dreams
and she told me
even though winters in Minnesota
are bitter cold
they never numb her longing

My brother, black as the dirt
his mother farmed her whole life,
black as the silence about his
missing father, wrote me a letter
from the psychiatric
hospital where they put him, telling me
that he feels like he is losing
his whole self in a war against himself
and he doesn’t know who he is anymore
I replied that California
is where people go to get lost
not to find themselves
Go home, my brother
you are a prince in your own land
though the doctors here have
named you psychotic

To the lost boys of Sudan
I too have watched my workplace
throw out food, and I too have done
the math of how many people
that could’ve fed, and I too have wept
for the stories I cannot tell,
the people who do not know how
to care or even understand

Two years ago I watched
a little white girl
pack up all of her things
and get on a plane to Sierra Leone
but she was too young to know
what she had gained
and what she would lose
or how mirrors never tell
enough of the story

I have never met a land
so alluring as Africa
I have never known a people
so full of yearning
as the lost souls of Africa

Today it is a cool and grey afternoon
in south-east Pennsylvania
and I am gathered with a crowd
of black boys, laughing at each other
in Swahili, wearing skinny jeans and
Nike sneakers while they pore intently
over their English homework
They are too new to know yet
how much they’ve lost
and I will not be the one to tell them

{Opening quote is from “Africa” by Toto}

Grey-Green Rain
by Shiloh Phoenix

Why would you go back
she asks
Isn’t life better here

i smile
Depends what kind of better

Financially
she nods

i shrug
I guess so
but some stuff matters more

her eyes are intent
above the rim of her mask
but i can’t think of how
to explain
the warm freedom of Africa

grey-green rain
i remember
heavy mountain humidity
mango juice sticky
palm trees bent wind
smoky night on red gravel
dust and dust and dust

ashes on the breeze
hunger boiling in pots
whispered songs
starch stiff in the schoolyard
stars enough to bathe in

hot breath sweaty
bus tilted in red mud
roosters’ indignation
choking silt water
bare feet on firm dirt

baoba fuzzy sugar
glass soda straws
ice cream wet plastic
wrinkled skin rough
hope enough to taste

she is waiting
my tongue is wet
full of colour and memories
but no words

Other poems by Shiloh Phoenix
Other TCK poems

By CulTuremiKs, ago
tapestry colored knots

Complicated and Confident – Spoken Word

Complicated and Confident

by Ghanaperu

“The first year I came to this country, I swallowed down everything I had ever known and it slid down my throat into the darkness of secrets, or maybe just things nobody wanted to know. Either way I was empty, ready for the sunshine and breeze of this new world to wrap me up in a whirlwind strong enough to block out the rest. I should’ve known better, but somehow I still thought it would be that easy, that I would just keep my old secrets and build a new framework of identity and slide myself into it without losing too much. The first year I came to this country, I forgot everything I had ever learned and discovered a darkness of secrets inside of me big enough to block out the rest, but I lost too much.

In the end I found the pieces I needed, I dredged up my past and did not let it be forgotten. Instead I merged the old and the new together, weaving the different threads into a tangled mess of knots behind the scenes that nobody wanted to know about. I managed the chaos as carefully as walking on a black-night path except this time there was nobody to tell me how to do it with confidence and everybody was there to see when I tripped over the stump and landed in the thorns. Still, I wrapped my cloth around me like a bright mask or a new skin and when my new friends poked holes in it they discovered the whirling dances of a different country underneath, so they named me after my mix of colours and I blurred them all into something resembling stability. In the end I always knew that every story I told had holes and half-truths, but when I put them together they stacked into the pieces I needed to keep going so I held my chin high and taught myself confidence.

Sometimes, still, strangers ask questions. They see me and notice the blurred edges of my names, they catch glimpses of the holes in my skin and they wonder if I am really who they think I am. Mostly I reach into my jar of stories and I swirl the choices around and pick a truth to give them, something to cover up the things they don’t really want to know about. But sometimes I toss my head and laugh, unfurl the bright colours into a banner that declares – I am /never/ who you think I am – because I am not even who I think I am and I’m certainly not who I say I am and who am I anyway? Sometimes I spin in a dance they’ve never seen before and I tell them this too is me, sometimes I write them a poem full of foreign languages and can’t be bothered to interpret it. Sometimes, I am too much for them and I do not care because these are the pieces I need to make sure I don’t lose too much and the confusion of one stranger is a small price to pay for the gift of being complicated and confident.

You can’t catch me, I say, whirling away in a blur of secrets and stories colourful enough to block out the rest.

This year I met a stranger who tried. A stranger who chased after my trail of contradictions and picked up every half-truth I dropped along the way, came up to me with arms full of gathered pieces and told me – look I’ve found such a beautiful mess – as if the tangled knots of my underneath could ever be called beautiful. Messy, yes. I know my stories are messy, I know when my colours are spinning around me sometimes they stain the ground rainbow and I don’t know how to clean it up. But I held up the secrets I had hidden away in the darkness and discovered a mosaic of stained mess that even this country has chosen to name as art, and I wondered why it took a stranger to see that this too could be beautiful. Either way, I guess I was ready for the things nobody wanted to know to become the things I could choose to say, and I added them into my jar of stories imbued with every shred of confidence I have taught myself. After all, who else could show me how to wrap myself up in the sunshine and breeze of a new world without losing the pieces of my history that I needed, how to laugh at the edge of the night-dark and stand up to try again over and over until the blur of my stories swirled with confident colours? There was nobody there but me and the watching world.

So I built my secrets into a mosaic, turned the tapestry of my stories upside down and inside out to show the chaos, stacked my names into the holes of my half-truths and called it brave. Beautiful. A new kind of confident, a bold dance in the middle of the street with eyes flashing and feet stomping and hands clapping rhythms they learned somewhere far away and long ago, somewhere I cannot return but will not forget.

I’m not a line, I say these days. I’m a circle, looping back into myself like a repeating eight of infinity, an endless beautiful mess.”

Watch on YouTube here

Background audio is Turning Page by Sleeping At Last – listen here

More spoken word poetry from Ghanaperu

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Story of a Little Girl

This is how it starts
A little girl, too young to understand,
Told she is leaving behind an apartment
For an adventure, and she is glad.
Too glad to ask questions.

This is the middle, the
Whole entire story really
Dust and heat and foreign languages,
Friends who look different and
The little girl learns so many things
But it all comes down to this
Nothing ever stays the same, nothing
Ever lasts forever.

This is how it ends
A little girl, too old to forget
Is told she is leaving behind her world
For a new one and she is shattered.
Too shattered to protest.

I guess this is the real
Ending though
When the little girl walks
Onto the plane and flies away
Back to the world of
Apartments and becomes
Someone new, someone different,
Someone called
Me.

By Ghanaperu

Other poems by Ghanaperu:
You’re Invited, You Know
TCK Syndrome

Follow Ghanaperu on AllPoetry

By CulTuremiKs, ago

You’re Invited, You Know

You’re Invited, You Know

Look, look at the rain pounding
into the dust outside, doesn’t it
sound like home? Like tin roofs
and shouting and laughter?

You would remember these
things, if you were here, and so
I say them to the empty space all around
me, to the memory of your presence.

We were made of different stuff, you and I.
I am stardust, never content with small and you
are the oak trees strong and steady, so
you know, I’ll visit you again someday
but I won’t stay. Will you forgive me for that?

Life is supposed to be built of love
but you and I have made it out of
minutes in the middle of years, out
of snapshot memories faded at the edges.

Look, look at this place and
how empty it is without you.
The world is big but our hearts are small
and you’re invited, you know. To come.

By Ghanaperu

Other poems by Ghanaperu
To My New Friends
Eve of Bittersweet

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Spoken Word Poetry – Don’t Keep Your Distance (Do You Know How Many Times I Have Moved?)

by Ghanaperu

Do you know how many times
I have moved?
Sometimes I count them on my fingers,
fistful after fistful of tears
swollen in my throat and I try
to remember every single one
but I can’t.

Too many.
Too many times, it’s the only
number that fits the emotion
and I know
this won’t make sense to you but
my hands are full of this
place now and I can’t hold any more.

When I open my palms the memories
are dripping out and I’m
afraid if I stay longer I will
forget.

I don’t want to forget.

Do you know how many times
I have moved?
When I sleep I dream of
muted whispers in languages
you don’t speak and when I wake up
I write songs about the dusty grass
of places you’ve never been
and sometimes when you hold my hand
I imagine the worlds I have known
imprinted on my palm,
burning you in your ignorance.
How could anyone expect you to love
something as fragmented as me?

I tried, I really tried
to unclench my fists of memories,
to open up my hands and belong.
But every time I look at my palm
I see the lines of roads leading other
places and I can’t stop tracing them,
can’t stop aching to leave.
I can’t be part of a whole world;
everything is random moments
and I am disconnected from the
planned future.

I’m not here to stay. I’m never
here to stay.

You asked me tonight to go out
with you, tired grin through voice
texting and I wanted
to say no.

But instead I said yes and I drove
on these winding roads that never
lead to other places and I opened
my hands to you. I stayed
another day, I spilled a few more
memories and let you matter a
little bit more – I loved.

Do you know how many times
I have moved?

Too many, it’s the only answer
that fits and when I tell you
I love you I want you to think
of that. I don’t know how to be
a part of just one world, how to
hold your hand and love and
be loved without being
burned by the smallness of the story.

Staying here is like being
trapped, and I value freedom.
But even more than freedom,
I value you.

This is a TCK’s love poem, telling
you how badly I want to leave in hopes
that you will understand how
deeply you matter…

It’s okay if you don’t understand.

There is a vast difference
between us, a Sahara Desert of
sandy separation but I’m trying
(please tell me you can see
that I’m trying)
not to keep my distance.

It’s my desert. And every day I stay
the liquid memories leak out
of my hands into the sand and I think,
I think,
new life is growing here.
New life, small and green
and fragile, hopeful and timid.

So I will grow a trail of oasis
across this desert, copy for you
the map of roads on my palms
and let you destroy this distance
I have always kept.

But I’m not making promises.

One day I will add another
number to “too many” and I
will shut my fists tight around
these memories and I will leave.

But today is not one day,
and for now I am busy growing
life in a desert
with you.

Just don’t
keep your distance,
and I won’t keep mine.

small yellow flower growing in desert

Other spoken word poetry by Ghanaperu:
Hello, Hello
If I Could Change I Would

By CulTuremiKs, ago