I left as a child.
After two decades of living abroad
I’m finally returning back home for the first time.

As I am preparing,
My heart is longing.
I’m longing to touch and walk the ground,
where my umbilical cord was buried.

I’m longing to find my two long lost sisters
whom my mother left behind,
when she had to escape.

I’m longing to embrace my beloved grandmother,
aunts and uncles, all cousins and relatives—
whom I never met, and they never knew that I am even existed.

I’m longing to be home.

The place where I walked every night in my dreams.
Every day in my daydreaming.
The land that lived within my heart and
made up every essence of me.

I’m longing to be home.
I am longing to be held by the warmth and
kindness of my agonizing past.

Over two decades ago
I had to escape with bare feet.
Running through the woods and jungles,
Swimming across the mad river passing through
the danger of being arrested and imprisoned,
where everything that moved along the riverbank
was meant for shoot to kill.

Now I am returning as a legitimate gentleman
with an American passport flying back on an airplane.

Upon arrival, the captain of the flight released the
landing gears and made his final landing approach.

Flight attendants made their last brief announcements.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing at
Watai International Airport shortly.”

As I am listening—
The tingling numbness runs through my veins.

As I can hear the wheels touching against solid ground,
My whole body went immediately into shock.

My hundred thoughts of wonder and
thousand fears that wandered momentarily took over me.

As my whole body went through complete shock
I was shut down and frozen on my seat.

As I saw the flight attendant slowly approaching me,
I remember hearing this echoing voice.

“Sir, are you okay?
You have to leave the aircraft.
Before we can board our next flight.”

As I was walking out of the plane
Stepping down the staircase toward the ground
I felt the presence of my ancestors,
as if they all were there at the foot of the stairs to welcome me.

I could feel their earth,
I could smell their air,
I could hear their voices, celebrating my homecoming.

All of a sudden the weight of my
thousand tons of troubles and million categories of worries,
had just dispersed and disappeared.

As I bent down to touch the ground and kiss the earth
I inhaled deeply to breathe the perfume of the air;
The one that gave me my first breath.
The one that no life could forget.

A few days had gone by after I arrived at my birthplace.
I forced myself to go on—drifting along with
whatever flows from life.

As more days have come,
it’s harder to let it pass me by,
I am sunken, drowning deep into the sea of sorrows past—
but the inflection of poverty, suffering and hopelessness of
my related surroundings strongly announcing deep within every vein.
I have sank deeper, drowned deeper into the ocean of fear.

Fear for the future of my motherland and her children.
Once we were wounded by Imperialism and the Royal family’s fuel and war.
And now that very same wound turned into a scar of corporate greed and corruption.

Upon the early morning, songs of old farmers still come with
a thousand clauses buried deep within their lyrics that are echoing through
the hopeless fields from the hopeless hearts.

The wrinkle on the old widow’s face still serves as a river of tears.
The thickened skin in the palm of my uncle’s hand is only going to get
thicker as more of the harder days in his life is yet to come.

The old lyrics with a new tune with some additional melody
still sings a sad old song.

It seems like the three decades of revolution never evolutes one single cycle toward a brighter day of tomorrow.
Their world stood still, frozen-dead within time.

The lip service and illusive hope seemed to feed the purpose
For the mother and children of the land where they only knew the broken dreams.

How can I give hope to the hopeless?
How can I express fear to the prey?
Every essence of the environment was full of aborting disaster.

When I was a child growing up in the comforting arms of this
loving-kindness motherland.
Creeks and rivers, mountains and jungles are our life lines and
resources for living.

It was clean and pure like an innocent soul of an infant.

Now it is true—that the new neighbor, who is still a stranger from
a very far away village, was excitedly proud to say with
great pride from his deepest thoughts:

“Our superior political party leaders whom we can call
and treat like an uncle or brother.
Have a great deal of good deed intentions. Our government is powerful and strong.
They can build a long bridge across the Mekong River
to a neighboring country.
All new irrigations run through plantations and rice fields.
Many creeks and rivers are now turned into hydro electric,
Water buffalo are hardly used to plow our grounds,
almost everything now is replaced by machine power.
Rice fields and plantations now use pesticides with all kinds of
weed and insect killers.
Now we’re no longer needed to chase bugs and insects all
season long.
Gold mines are now digging; every kind of treasure that
is submersed now is emerging from our earth and ground.
In the name of Buddha we pray.
May our leaders prevail and achieve.
Congratulations! Congratulations! To us, all my dear comrades.”

The sad sound of the old broken flute that is completely
out of tune without realizing it—since there is nobody listening.

The poor father of the land
Who never knew how to properly announce to his faithful children–
What is truth and what is justice?
What is greed and what is generosity?
What is loss and what is gain?
What is to embrace and what is to prevent?
What is right and what is liberty?

In just a matter of time all kinds of tragedies
will sadly sink this lonely boat.
With the old and half blind captain traveling to distances
without the accompaniment of a single compass.

All the goodness and Buddhist doctrines are more or less -
and least and last on the list of priorities.

What happens to the eight-fold path to achieve happiness in our life?
I asked.

What about two-out-of-eight-fold path?
Do we still know or even acknowledge that
was our principle of wisdom?

Path to—Right Views.
Path to—Right Intentions.

What will happen, if we don’t see what we are seeing?
What will happen?
If we can no longer get in tune with our own thoughts or consciousness?
How do we know what our intentions are in all of what we are doing and thinking?

The longer I stay the more questions I ask,
but regardless of whatever my thoughts and concerns are
None of them were counted, just simply—
They see me as a foreigner, the outsider.
Once again I am a foreigner and a stranger in my own home country.

As a 17-year-old girl in a noodle soup shop was wondering
while I was ordering my traditional soup made from an old Lao recipe,

“Sir, where are you from?”
She sincerely asked.

Disappointedly, I reply,
I was born here.
Right here in this town.”

“No, you were not, because you don’t sound like one of us.”

With greater emphasis as I attempted and tried harder to convince her.

Yes, indeed.
Yes, indeed I am from here.

She responded to me with no words,
just soft giggling with a glimpse of a smile as she walked away.

From that moment on I came to realize;
Since the day I stepped out of that motherland’s womb.
I became an adopted child of the world—
Sheltered under the roof of humanity.
I am no longer a true citizen of any particular nation or country.
I am not politically Lao nor pure American.
I am a Laotian-American,
but I am a citizen of the world.
Living freely in the home within my own heart and
the comfort of my own soul’s despair.

I am FREE as I wish to be.
FREE from all unsettling past
FREE to move forward to future
FREE at the present as I am being liberated
I am FREE forever, as I deserve to be.

I am now truly FREE inside the home that I built in my heart.

This poem is copyright by LCM (Lao Century Media LLC)
This poem is part of the book FISH Of TWO WATERS by Thavisouk Phrasavath

A place that we called home.
The place where everyone is connected by the roots of
their clans and ancestors.

The place where everybody knew everybody
The place where our identities were never questioned and
no one dared to ever ask:

Who are you?
What are you?
Where are you from?

The family’s clan is our roots.
The roots that are projecting and reflecting the image of
who we are, what we are and where we are from.

The code of honor that we never break or dare to cross.
The moral borderline that we invisibly draw for ourselves
so we can retain human value, silently deep within us,
and in our souls.

The family and its name is our point of all reference in our society.
Just like the old Laotian proverb said:

“Berng Zang hai berng harng
Berng Narng hai berng phor berng mae.”

(If you look at the elephant make sure you also look at its tail.
If you look at the girl make sure you also look at her mother and father.)

Everything circulates around the family and clan, ancestors and heritage.
Family is the mirror that images our individual self.
It is everyone’s responsibility to protect and
guard their family dignity with their own life.

The place where we call home.
It’s a place where our ancestors left their footprints and
the path for us to follow.
It is the place where our heroes and warriors were born to
shed their blood and give their lives to keep and
protect our existence as a people and as a country.

As for all the people who were spiritually or blood related to this place,
we shared the same myths; we shared the same history,
and we shared the same thoughts and memories.

We’ve all listened to their spoken voice of words
through the earth, in the air, fire, wind and sky.
Their voice is everywhere.
Their voice is always ringing in our ears.
We hear it every day in our hearts.
We know that they are near; we can feel them close—in our soul.

A place we called home.

The place where there is no need to imagine—
Just close our eyes and we are there.
The place that always lives and is alive within us. All of us.

The place where there has never been a distance from us, but rather
has drawn us closer and closer by increasing increments of time that
we have physically been apart.

We all are the new generation and migration of the new found land.
But we’re all still the descendents of the old place.

The place where we called home.

The place I see every night before I go to bed,
in the middle of my sleep and in my dreams.
Every morning when I open my eyes I see it.
I see it in my conscious and sub-conscious mind.
A very special place that I treasure the pleasure of knowing—
that’s where I belong, the place that made me and gave me my origins—
the place where my first and last name was given.
The place that gave me my roots, my traditions and my cultural heritage.

The place that is always available for me to be what I need to be,
to feel what I need to feel.
The place where there is no need to breathe in the air through
other people’s nostrils.
The place where everything’s just right,
and we own that right by all means of every given law of nature.

A place that I called home.
Deep within my heart as we all Laotians know.
What we call

LAOS.

This poem is copyright by LCM (Lao Century Media LLC)
This poem is part of the book FISH OF TWO WATERS by Thavisouk Phrasavath

Wind and sunlight,
Human and earth,
Bird and sky,
Animal and tree,
Roots and heritage.

Every layer of stone told a thousand tales about our mother earth.
Every layer of soil is one generation of our past.
Every empty field and landmarked buried generations of our ancestors.
Every piece of the earth made from every element of the universe.

Earth,
Air,
Wind,
Fire,
Water and sky.

Everything in every heritage has ancestral value and
the presence of their spirits.

Every value must be claimed or every essence of
our precious treasure will be valueless.

If we do not decorate our heritage with dignity and
value they will say:

“One mans trash is another mans treasure.”

If we don’t claim the worth of the treasure we own,
it soon will belong to others.

If we, as children of the land or the roots of that heritage,
don’t carry the umbilical cord of our ancestors through our
next generation—then there will be no one else to carry it for us.

If we do not shed the light and enlightenment upon ourselves,
everyone else will shed darkness and breathe evil into us.
If we don’t create our own super heroes now—
What generation of our future descendents will?

Heritage is a two-sided mirror.
One side allows us to see ourselves and
the other side allows us to see our ancestors.
Every generation is an extended pipeline to
carry the flow of our ancestor’s heritage—
from one side of the descendent to the other.

Why is heritage so profoundly important?

Heritage is every essence of elements that made us who we are.
As a great example of how America labeled it own indigenous citizen.

There is no such word as “American”
That’s why America labeled its own native—American Indians.

America is the land made of multiple ancestors,
So we all must endure our heritage,
Embrace the unknown generation in the making.

Whatever ancestors that we will be making is dependent on
whatever heritage we utilize today.

Without specifying a specific heritage then
how will the world know how to label us or
identify us into a proper category?
Then:
Who we are?
What we are?
These questions will be asked forever without end.

Endure and embrace—
Free ourselves from the blindness of duality that embedded
in our corporate culture and society.
Unifying ourselves into oneness with nature
May the holy spirit of our ancestor lead us and
light our way back to our roots so we all can be part of our heritage.
Once again we all can prosper with the nourishment
of every essence of the universe.

We all need to acknowledge our roots and
preserve our heritage, because this is the
topsoil that proliferates our Humanity Tree.

Wind and Sunlight
Human and Earth
Bird and Sky
Animal and Tree
Root and heritage

HERITAGE—we are children and citizens of the universe.

This poem is copyright by LCM (Lao Century Media LLC)
This poem is part of the book FISH OF TWO WATERS by Thavisouk Phrasavath

Born to be Lao – must love Lao.
Born to be Lao – must help other Lao.
Born to be Lao – must be proud.
Born to be Lao – must be Loud, Louder and Loudest.
Born to be Lao – no other option but the best.

Be Lao be proud,
always stand up high and tall on the highest ground.
Be Lao, be bright and enlightened.
As the descendents of Buddha’s children
We must see our world with our wisdom and moral minds.

Born to be Lao – be proud of your traditional and cultural heritage.
Be the best that all humans possibly can be.
Be good, be better, be the best, be boundary less.
There is no such dream or achievement that is bigger than
what we as the Lao can dream or can achieve.

The children who can bring the joyful heart
for the motherland of Laos are the ones who
shine the light and bring the glory, name, fame,
dignity and honor to her name.

Mother Lao,
I am proud that I was born to be your child.
Being your child I know that I have a
great responsibility to be the best that I possibly can be.
To love is to embrace 68 ethnicities of our siblings and
48 dialect tones of your lyrical tongue.

Forever you will be our
Mother of honor.
Mother of our heritage.
Mother of our origin.

Forever I will be grateful and proud to be your child.
Mother LAO.

Born to be Lao – must love Lao.
Born to be Lao – must help other Lao.
Born to be Lao – must be proud.
Born to be Lao – must be Loud, Louder and Loudest.
Born to be Lao – no other option but the best.

This poem is copyright by LCM (Lao Century Media LLC)
This poem is part of the book FISH OF TWO WATERS by Thavisouk Phrasavath

You can order the book today at:

• laocenturymedia.com
• amazon.com
• various book stores

Special Announcement:

***Thavisouk Phrasavath
I am honored to announce that I will have a special appearance with Miss Minnesota USA 2012 Nitaya Panemalaythong and the Laotian Queen of Jazz Ketsana Vilaylack on Saturday, April 7, 2012 in Elgin, Illinois!

***Thavisouk Phrasavath
Please come out to support our fund raising effort to help Miss Nitaya Panemalaythong to help her pursue her dream of becoming the 1st Laotian to be name Miss USA pageant. Don’t miss your once in a lifetime chance to support this important and historical event.

***Thavisouk Phrasavath
Will be attending the Seventh Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser (Art of the Written Word)
For Lao Heritage Foundation on Saturday, Oct 1, 2011 
6:30 PM – 11:00 PM
For more information about this special events please visit:

http://www.laoheritagefoundation.org/rsvp_template.jsp?eventNum=0

Stepped Out of the Womb
Will be available for purchase at the event.

***Please come join Thavisouk Phrasavath on October 4th, 2011 6:30 pm
for a screening of “The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)” and book signing.
For more information about this special events please visit:

http://www.bringpeacenotpain.com/upcoming_events

The screening is free and open to the public at:
The Firehouse Theater

http://www.firehousetheater.org/

***Thavisouk Phrasavath
Will be attending the screening of
“THE BETRAYAL (Nerakhoon)”
A Duke Human Rights Film Series on
September 13, 2011 7:00 pm
for Q and A , also to introduce my newly released book
Stepped Out of the Womb
(A memoir of a journey to the land where the sun falls)
The screening is free and open to the public at the
FHI Garage, Bay 4, 1st Floor, Smith Warehouse,
114 South Buchannan Blvd,
Durham, North Carolina 27701

Free parking (http://maps.duke.edu/building/150).
Free Drinks and Popcorn

96 minutes

If you are in the area, please come out to support.