poetry

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

Goodbye to Here

Another filled up, worn-out suitcase, another crossed off day—
Tomorrow I’ll again be going a million miles away.
I know someday I’ll return, but I know it won’t be the same
Because that’s just how it’s always worked in the traveler’s game:
Always moving; always settled; I don’t fit in; I belong—
Trying to blend in but always doing someone’s culture wrong.
I love the memories; I’m going to hold them close and dear. 
Farwell, the ticket says I’ve got to leave, so goodbye to here.

Goodbye to every face I’ve come to love.
Hello to familiar skies above.
Goodbye to what I’ve learned so I can blend.
Hello to strange customs that are my friend.
I face it all with no and every fear.
Hello to over there; goodbye to here.

I go through the familiar airport procedures and routines
Until it’s my turn to get into that big flying machine.
As I take off, I watch everything below grow so small,
And I can’t believe that again I’m leaving behind it all.
Trying not to cry even though I’ve got memories to keep.
Trying to keep myself entertained and then just fall asleep.
Trying not to laugh as I get excited about what’s ahead.
Trying to trust that we follow where God has faithfully led.

Goodbye to every face I’ve come to love.
Hello to familiar skies above.
Goodbye to what I’ve learned so I can blend.
Hello to strange customs that are my friend.
I face it all with no and every fear.
Hello to over there; goodbye to here.

I can’t imagine life for those who always live in one place,
Knowing what they’ll do each day and recognizing every face.
One mind, one tongue, one heart, one life, one home, one land where they live.
They say I sacrifice, but there’s more than what you see me give.
Maybe I can’t define home or use one speech to tell how I feel,
But I know I’ve come to love this world in a way much more real.
Someday maybe I’ll settle in a place most people call home,
But my heart still won’t understand why I can’t forever roam.

Goodbye to every face I’ve come to love.
Hello to familiar skies above.
Goodbye to what I’ve learned so I can blend.
Hello to strange customs that are my friend.
I face it all with no and every fear.
Hello to over there; goodbye to here.

by Katrina P. Puckett

By CulTuremiKs, ago

No Creature’s Form

With the wings of an Eagle I cry
Screaming the freedom of wind and sky
Untethered from all land and place
I’m Queen of the unclaimed space

With Chameleon scales, I master disguise
Waiting for my cue with roaming eyes 
Blending to each new culture displayed
As my skin knows no original shade

With a turtle’s dark shell I hide
Holding my emotion protected inside
Come too close and I will retract
To keep my softer sides intact

With a camel’s back and wandering feet
I’m built to travel through the heat
My restless nature drives me on
Till all I’ve been or known is gone

With so many parts and pieces
The more you see the confusion increases
Nothing is simply mine but my name
No creature’s form can I fully claim

by Danae Tanner

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Temporarily Permanent

1.
I wrote something today
even though
I had nothing to say
there is too much music here
too many people who say
what I want to say
better than I ever could.

So I find myself
sucked into the information age
and suddenly time means something.
Once upon a time
I had read every book
available to me
but now,
I could never do that.

Once (or twice) there
I went a whole day
without ever looking at a clock.
Time
is just a word there
but here
it is what they (we?) live by.

2.
Someone asked me,
yesterday,
the one question
none of us can answer –
“Where are you from?”
And I wanted to say
“nowhere” or
“everywhere” or
“God” or
“Africa” or 
any number of other things
but suddenly 
I didn’t have the energy 
to explain
again
so I said
“Pennsylvania.”
After all, 
I know people there.
It is as good a place
as any other
for me to pick.

But really,
who I am now
is only a fleeting identity.
Maybe tomorrow
I will be someone else –
speak another language and
claim another place as my hometown,
or maybe I won’t.

But for now, for today,
this is who I am
and what I am
for those who ask me that
(such a stupid question. I am a
person, of course!)
And here I stand
temporarily permanent.

By Bluedarkness

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Green Culture

Under country, over country,
Never committed and always free,
But that’s freedom by plane, 
And not freedom of pain.

That pain hides in the greetings that are filled with goodbyes,
Our hello is rather uninviting, we realize.
But it’s a result of a normal routine 
Of always having to leave as the in-between.

Our looks deceive – 
We are not who you believe. 
We know both more thank you think,
And less than you think.

Yellow in the sea of Blue,
In the sea of Yellow, we are Blue.
Holding the knowledge of a Green
We are mistaken as pretentious, as causing a scene.

We return home
To absorb the culture of home, 
But Painters admire each color alone, 
For Black absorbs all, yet has no culture of its own.

Yet there’s beauty in Green! 
It’s not a fault to be in-between. 
But Painters are stubborn, 
Holding the old standard of one, they just don’t learn

That Green is both – it’s two – 
Not yellow, not blue.
Is that not so simple? 
Yet it remains incomprehensible.

You may know us as Global Citizens;
We carry the global burdens.
The dark eye bags remain as battle scars of jet-lag, 
Telling of the loss and grief from flag to flag.

Some of us live on the prayer cards on your fridge,
Between you and the 3rd world, we’re the bridge.
Existing as the good of the world in your sight, 
It is a fallacy we must rewrite.

If we didn’t bring our Sunday’s best
To visit your church to impress,
Perhaps you would be disillusioned, and the truth be known 
Of the dirt we bear, of the sin we own.

The truth is that we are scruffy
With the odor of our homes stuck to our shirts, a smell that is friendly,
Familiar because it is foreign,
Foreign to any other person.

If our real closet was opened, it would burst.
Culottes falling first, 
Hand-me-downs intertwined, 
Revealing our fashion – only 10 years behind!

The skin of a chameleon
Has granted us the chance of one in a million
To adapt, give, and share all before noon,
And before we’re gone, for our goodbyes come all too soon.

by Rachel Hudson

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Uniquely Me

I am a confusion of cultures.
Uniquely me.
I think this is good because I can understand the traveler, sojourner, foreigner, the homesickness that comes.
I think this is bad because I cannot be understood by the person who has sown and grown in one place.
They know not the real meaning of homesickness that hits me now and then.
Sometimes I despair of understanding them.
I am an island and a United Nations.
Who can recognize either in me but God?

By Alex Graham James

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Restless Blues

lay the line down
just away out of town
another road to wander
freedom is a horizon
ahead of me

some need a companion
urging them on to see
a world that moves in front of them
is just another dream

my feet shuffle restlessly
as soon as the leaves turn
cool autumn breeze tells me
there is somewhere else to be

can’t say I won’t return
but I know I won’t stay
anyplace I am accepted
means I’ve gotten there too late

by Guilty

By CulTuremiKs, ago

In Nepal / So Hum

Caught his eye
Walking in the mid day heat
In Bhaktapur.

Faraway – – look

Both of us a little like strangers,
Though he was born here
In his dusty gem encased by mountains
Cradled in the mist

He’d since
Seen the sea in Spain
& there gaining a new life
Lost some of the old

the cold mornings when he’d run laps around the pokhari with the other boys. One was always fastest – ran two times around before he could finish one.

We sit at its side now, smoking our cigarettes,
& I can’t tell how he feels
when he says that the children playing in the streets
Are foreign to him now.

by Aoife Higgins

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Echo

bright splashes of sound and smell laugh 
in my face as I drag 
a finger through the dusty residue of last night’s 
dreams
thoughts reaching eagerly for the edge of our windowsill 

voices ring through my sister’s room and 
small feet
chase the goats of Rue 3
I stick out my tongue because the air 
is warm and salty and I
am glad to be alive

my feet find their way to the kitchen 
and I smile up at a dripping face
“here”
I wriggle my hips into the skirt held out for me 
stiff 
with the sun and wind of Harmattan

the trucks begin to arrive 
shouting hello to the watchman and we run 
bare feet slapping across the cement, skidding 
to a stop in the sudden sand
as I sneak a look behind me 
before ducking through the doors

whip the willow
is new for us but the music 
is already in our veins 
so we listen our way into the patterns on the floor
rhythm 
pulling the room in dizzy circles
lock elbows and spin faster
crooked 
grin
we could dance 
all night 

later
the roof is a breathless 
purple 
leaning out over the courtyard, the moon 
is nowhere to be found
quiet footsteps 
pad on the stairs 
I turn around and you point 
so we look up at the sky and 
pick a star to wish on 

… 

an alarm clock rings in the distance 
my eyes fly open 
groping for the mosquito net 
and I turn my face towards the window, but there’s a wall 
instead
confused snow 
drifting quietly 
to the ground outside 
a new window 
over there
I am lost and this must be 
Minnesota

by Kekelime

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Lens

my memories, they are not of Ethiolo 
of small feet winding 
down a dusty path to a water-well worn 
with the chatter of women, girls I used to know 

I can’t see the dirt, red against your ankles
hear the call of buckets to one another 
sloshing in the sway of hips
flip flops mingled in the early morning light

I remember knives flying 
tongues sliding 
across the smooth expanse of the language we shared
stretched through our fingers as peppers danced, green 
into your pan 

the screech of a wheelbarrow 
bare feet slapped 
across the bricks, padded
through the sand 

I remember 
sticky heat, and 
breeze through my hair
waves lapping 
against a shore that curves into the distance 
lost blue in a city sky 

by Kekelime

By CulTuremiKs, ago