Home, My Home by Alexandra Sim
Home, My Home
by Alexandra Sim
My home, a home or wherever I'm flung into the open arms of dark streets and broken lights:
cobblestones of dirt and dust, a collection of art unmatched in beauty shines with dusk
with the blood-stained paintings of refurbished castles and bricks lining the walls;
They were guarded by the sentries centuries, long have they have guarded those walls, have learnt the song.
I've learnt the song; I've walked along the trickling river parted by Moses' bridge /I'm partial to the highways/
I've stood at the crumbling edge, saw yellow tiles flooding from the floors beneath my feet:
it left me floating as the judges told me say your piece.
I said my peace,
they screamed and raged with wrathful burning eyes, scratching and tearing at my weary soul
with vultures claws of Asphalt, Ash and Fire that tore at my bedroom within my home
that isn't my home, then bade me leave
Barefoot through streets where once run foals and flowing rivers,
now car tires.
The poets say the river ran through a Kingdom of Monsters /of men/, the mean and the broken so they broke us they will never
break a nation destroyed by the notion of a savior, of land and owning the earth: their arms are so weak they cannot hold it:
they made us hold our home on bowed backs and bid us walk /walk with wrath/
The history books call me Asiatic they say I worship: Do I worship? Gods of forgotten names I'll
remember I'll learn I'll praise
and cherish past days when I walked clothed in sandals and rough linen, chasing roaches and
laughing in streets,
arms stretched and burning and birthing.
A thousand times I've seen the colossus fall and these Mountains are no different,
Just at a Different Stage
On a page that reads in words of truth /of lies/ that reads of bravery /of murder/ of survival /of death/
I'll learn the truth, with truthful words I'll resurrect your home that is our truth, this is our truth
Remember Me
Remember Me
Remember Me
But the poets did mislead us, for what task could be so great! I ran to find my answer, and in doing so locked the gate
To home, sweet home, my home, where have you gone? I did not leave /you left/
I went searching /was lost/ to be found
Just when we were learning not to look away /see me/ but you cannot look when I am already away, have fled
have been blown to
have flown
To a city /I miss the isle/ where I find space, a pace to fall into the rhythm of this rose-broken world, that ate my flesh and drank my blood —
This place I crossed a world to find /I already found/ some peace what peace can be found in empty nations
of broken buried castles that weep beneath my feet
as I walk on bones above;
No history of worth could be scratched
into these walls of cracking plaster and covered ages,
stories once murmured to another by bayside, now
paper wrapped and bound in chains of leather.
What are these roots that clutch, these branches that grow?
A dead city tree of aging poets day that wrapped around my soul and
Swept me up in ghostly thoughts of thoughtless trivialities;
In fighting for the future, my anchor was set down — a heavy thing of rust rusted roses
that its wake revealed a sense of chaos yet to yield.
They grope and push at youth to carry
weary weight of our current days /we carry your past/
and bare our naked soul to the judgement of the ages:
I told you to remember /Remember Me/ thinking it was right
Then to the city I had fled, to scratch my queries in gravel
They slammed down the gavel
down
down
down
In searching for the past, my current was misplaced, and down the gavel came.
Having lived and been conquered, the ancients say she is to both a victim.
In penance, there she went, sent by judges:
They gave me a suitcase of neon fire, to carry
clothes and umbrellas and desserts while deserts live behind my eyes,
Their decree drips of my oily sky-stained skin, as I walk
from grainy cobble to plastic towers: no coverage can be found as the clouds
Mourn dwindling’s of human memory: I have an umbrella.
Two months or forty-nine days.
Two months and a day till I could say goodbye to collections of art and cobblestone dirt /I never said hello/ a tableaux in my life astride a history, a mystery of all the days that passed
Before. I know the mystery, I searched for
clues, I learnt the answer: we are not of nations but of earth, one earth one past one life - one
chance to do right.
Now.
We are circling the perimeter /I love birds/ the rim of bone white plastic and air as sand left my
lungs.
Now.
We are kissing the land - they stare at us - of bone white sand,
and breathing in the salty brimstone air - stalking waves for power, to remove the illusion separating us.
This island, this wine-stained island of warming fire and musty smells and wattle trees and loving arms and home.
I was somewhere.
I went home.Submit your polished poetry for the opportunity of being published on ViewlessWings.com and being interviewed on The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.
Hear Alexandra Sim recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:
Alexandra Sim is a poet by night and student by day. Her own short bio appears in such publications as The Poet, Caterpillar Review and Rattle. She’s currently working on her debut manuscript, though she can often be found scrolling through new ways to procrastinate. Find her at: alexhsim@icloud.com
