MY poem “Seeking Home” was, in
a way, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca's “Poeta en Nueva York,”
or poems he wrote while in the US in early 1930s, plus the work of
revered Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan. A part of my poem goes:
… I
seek comfort in
many
open doors that remain close
even
as I am freely welcomed in.
Love
fails to communicate
in
a borrowed language
that
seems to grow more strange
in
each mumbling of sorrow
or
joy; words that bounce back
like
ten-minute autumn rain
that
dry down like cheap vodka
on
chapped lips, hot clinches stolen
in
between hours-rendered,
dollars-paid...”
The excruciating need to belong, to love like the way we've ever known
before we sailed away from home, screams from within. We try to find
room for such a huge longing for love and so we buy into the
culture—a culture that is close yet so distant—and then we end up
empty because of the blunt, naked fact that vacuums within aren't
filled by fillings that don't speak of the spirit that we've known.
On a more blatant way, can we imagine the many illegal immigrants who
fell in love and allow that heart to stay suspended on midair—since
love is not real without a green card? Those people who had to numb
the craving for a tangible touch that stays? Those people who had to
sell their soul for a piece of paper called visa? So they can live
normal lives—minimum wage, a tiny room with empty walls, a beat up
sedan, minimum-plan credit card, or just to stride into a bar for
beer and not being eyed with indifference or suspicion? And what goes
on in the mind of those who say “I love you” in 3-minute marriage
in a Las Vegas drive-in chapel because that's what it takes to be
“normal”?
This
is an immigrant's pain that America's heart should fit in. The Great
American Dream. It is not a dream—it is just a job that pays for
few dollars sent to waiting families back home, a box filled with
Spams and Campbell Soups and a Goodwill sweater. The journey is not a
dream—it is love that is said from the depths of one's heart and
not lose it because the other guy has the dream more secured with an
AmEx card and health insurance. The Dream is not the Statue of
Liberty or Disneyland or a beach house in Big Sur or an SUV with
built-in wi-fi. The dream is the freedom to say it because we feel it
as an individual truth, the freedom to pursue happiness as a human
right, the freedom to worship a god irrelevant of shape and color and
language, and the freedom to love and keep it because it is personal
and intimate and exclusive...
Hence,
“Seeking Home” comes in little snippets of joy—a kiss from a
child after a Dollar Tree gift, a hug after a recitation of a poem in
a downtown cafe, a good hot meal on winter, and a song that reminds
of a past, a memory, that says, “I was there, I was complete—until
my pieces slipped into a ship and sailed away...” At least, that
memory offers hope.
The
title of Carlos Bulosan's novel was “America is in the Heart.” I
never knew what that meant after reading the book. Until I felt it
myself. America, life—like love, it's all in the heart...
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