“Not a Refugee” by Nicholas Nassiff

I've been anointed; the buck has been passed,
Voice of a new generation and the die has been cast.

Where are we to go from here?
Sadness and misery is our national allegory.
What am to tell my daughter: "Baba, you are a refugee."

All of our scribes and intellectuals have been defeated, defiled, or martyred.
Who speaks for WE? Masochists, misogynists and collaborators are writing our history.

I have anointed myself as the voice,
we are no longer victims, we have a choice.

I have the benefit of viewing the filed from the diaspora,
My lenses are not corrupted by the local mukhabara.

As the old cliché goes: drop the guns and pick up the pen,
I know it isn't easy as flippin on the tele will make you blood red

What is ours is time to repossess, to take back,
I am not speaking of land, objects or promulgating violent attack.

You see we have worried far too much on the immaterial and the afterlife,
We have lost sight of the value of our own lives.

We must live and we must struggle
so we may be prodigious in all our pursuits.

We must live and we must struggle
so we may earn back what has been lost

We must live so we no longer have to struggle with our destiny,
This is our path to reason, to cultural clarity,
So I can tell my daughter, "baba, you're no longer a cultural refugee."