Ancestry Poems

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand-
fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare
...

That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
...

That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
...

A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud. He is the new bearer of a great and illustrious ancestry, and upon him depends the brilliant future of this realm. Sing and be merry!" The voices of the throngs, full of joy and thankfulness, flooded the sky with exhilarating song, welcoming the new tyrant who would affix the yoke of oppression to their necks by ruling the weak with bitter authority, and exploiting their bodies and killing their souls. For that destiny, the people were singing and drinking ecstatically to the heady of the new Emir.

Another child entered life and that kingdom at the same time. While the crowds were glorifying the strong and belittling themselves by singing praise to a potential despot, and while the angels of heaven were weeping over the people's weakness and servitude, a sick woman was thinking. She lived in an old, deserted hovel and, lying in her hard bed beside her newly born infant wrapped with ragged swaddles, was starving to death. She was a penurious and miserable young wife neglected by humanity; her husband had fallen into the trap of death set by the prince's oppression, leaving a solitary woman to whom God had sent, that night, a tiny companion to prevent her from working and sustaining life.
...

THE LARGEST OF A HEAP LYING NEAR A DESERTED QUARRY, UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS AT RYDAL

Stranger! this hillock of mis-shapen stones
Is not a Ruin spared or made by time,
...

Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.
...

The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel,
...

By the Feal's wave benighted,
No star in the skies,
To thy door by Love lighted,
I first saw those eyes.
...

ONCE I saw mountains angry,
And ranged in battle-front.
Against them stood a little man;
...

How blind the toil that burrows like the mole,
In winding graveyard pathways underground,
For Browning's lineage! What if men have found
Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll
...

A tall, slight, English gentleman,
With an eyeglass to his eye;
He mostly says “Good-Bai” to you,
When he means to say “Good-bye”;
...

Why should I stop, why?
the birds have gone in search
of the blue direction.
the horizon is vertical, vertical
...

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
...

In the rural, green landscape of your birth place of County Offaly,
Driving down it's winding roads with the serenity of the Slieve Bloom mountains
Conquering the views from every angle,
Birds sing with a lyrical beauty
...

Oh, she was ever so beautiful
As she stood out in the grass
A pristine white fence surrounds her
There's no way I could simply pass
...

In one dread night our city saw, and sigh'd,
Bow'd to the dust, the Drama's tower of pride
In one short hour beheld the blazing fane,
Apollo sink, and Shakspeare cease to reign.
...

He was a “Flim flam man”
Cheated folks for a livin
In the town of Spokane
He took, 'stead of givin
...

WYNDHAM! 'tis not thy blood, though pure it runs
Through a long line of glorious ancestry,
Percys and Seymours, Britain's boasted sons,
...

I met a lady in the wood.
No mortal maid, I knew, was she;
She was no thing of flesh and blood,
No child of human ancestry.
...

He. BE it right or wrong, these men among
   On women do complain;
Affirming this, how that it is
   A labour spent in vain
...

The Mallabhum kingdom of Bishnupur
Taking us to a vast territory
Ruled over by the Malla kings
Taking to their heyday of splendour,
...

Leaf of tea
How you flee
Smells of tears
What, you be?
...

By Stanley Collymore

Big game hunting equals sick
people, and it's essentially
...

By Stanley Collymore

What an utterly obscene disparity!
Live by the sword and die by the
...

Not hearing

The old Canadian poet of Jewish ancestry
tall and elegant, wore his hat in a jaunty slant
...

I was born a black princess at an Eastern lost, abandonned, hardly populated village, in order that I could afford myself ties and composing lines of them, plainly, not intricately, blankly even. I am lost in ties, I am spoilt with wrong routes up tangled by moot forecasts and acute prefeelings. And yet, the entire itinerary proves to be unforeseen, of fresh gulps of wrong air. I am excluded from the royal row, and the utmost steps remain unoccupied, if not dismissed. Black rootage stirs blankly, at random, unforetellably. Fresh morphology destroys prior principiality. Impeccable dark ancestry lingers at its rude uniqueness, irrepeatability at quite starkly other, though adjacent, races.2022
...

The breaths miss. I
look into your eyes. The natural
heart beats were losing the rhythm.
...

The Poet will publish my poem, "My Mother's History" in an upcoming anthology on Cultural Identity. My ethnic background is a bit complicated. Depending upon how I look at it, I have 18 to 20 nationalities in my tangled family DNA.

From my father's side of the family, I inherited a German family name, Scandinavian blue eyes, with ancestors coming from France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Lapland, Norway, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, and somehow the Basque region. I also have some Jewish ancestry and a trace of Mongolian ancestry as do most people of Eastern European background. And my DNA test also claims that there is some Italian ancestry somewhere and perhaps Spanish ancestry.
From my mother's side of the family, I am part Scot, part Irish, part French, part Dutch, part Cherokee and part Nigerian. Since she was part of the lost tribe of the Cherokee Indians, her story is particularly complicated as her ancestors fled before being enrolled in a tribe and lived in the Ozarks intermarrying with other Indian tribes, Scot and Irish settlers, and escaped slaves. In any event, there are so few people in her ethnic group -perhaps 25,000 that they don't show in DNA tests. Since her parents show Cherokee that means I am anywhere from 1/8 to 1/8 Cherokee. I met my uncle once and he looked Cherokee to me.
...

Mules, poor beings,
Dedicated lives
Destined to carry loads,
Loads of soiled clothes
...

Like the River Nile she flows with food and culture
With natural resources and unrefined treasure
Nurtured and moulded by noble ancestry
With such quality and beauty of the ebony
...