By Joel Steendam
Poems Standard
TCK Syndrome
There will be no trace
of me, here
after I have left
The colours of my paintings on the walls
are not stains
the laughter of the memories
won’t stay forever
and everything that ever made this
space mine
is transportable
I knew enough when I came here
to plan it this way
So you’re standing at the door
smiling for the hope of a future
but I
can feel the suitcase handle in my fingers
and I don’t remember myself
anymore
Does that make me
a bad person?
If I have shuttered my mind
and heart and soul,
folded my memories away into dusty boxes
and stacked them in the back
of the attic, is that
weakness?
All I know is
you have never left
like how I have left
and you can’t understand –
impermanence flows through
my veins as the very blood of my only hope
for survival
So I will smile and wave
at you in the doorway
and gather up my belongings
to carry myself away in
I can never return
because
nothing is ever the same again
by Ghanaperu
About the TCK experience Music
Right Where I Belong
From the end credits of Jungle Book II, performed by Windy Wagner.
Poems Spoken Word
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,
undeniablehome 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 hereI’m tired of being a TCK,
Tired of tracing my name into walls
to prove I existed
but mostly,
I’m tired of lying
Poems Standard
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