Dedication
This work is dedicated to every artist who crossed oceans to America believing it was a sanctuary for creation — a land where imagination could breathe, where talent would be honored, where dreams could finally stand upright.
They came with canvases, instruments, manuscripts, and visions. They came with discipline, courage, and the fragile hope that art would be enough. But the system met them not with welcome, but with walls. Not with recognition, but with rejection. Not with belonging, but with bureaucratic exile.
This dedication honors every artist whose brilliance was dimmed by immigration machinery that could not see their humanity. Every dancer who could not step onto a stage because paperwork held them hostage. Every painter who created beauty in a country that refused to acknowledge their presence. Every musician who filled rooms with sound while living in silence before the law. Every sculptor who shaped form while the system tried to unshape their dignity. Every writer who told the truth while the nation erased their name.
This is for the artists who came seeking love and instead were labeled “illegal.” For those who believed America would be a home and discovered it was a labyrinth. For those who gave their gifts to a country that refused to give them a place to stand.
May this work stand as witness. May it stand as protest. May it stand as protection. May it stand as a voice for those the system tried to silence. May it save them.
The Poem
My Soul Is Outside
My soul is outside
My body is paralyzed in the Love grave
This sweet divinity candy of love
Has faded away!
I sit silent at the Love funeral
I am empty, empty … Hmmmmmmmmmm !
My soul is outside
With Donning night vision glasses
I could see the ghost‑love depart
cold, silent, silent
My heart is divided between the Loved and the unloved
Evanescent love ripen very early
Buuuuut decayed soon
This bucket of my tears has taught
me today is more important than yesterday
… and from these ashes of decayed love will
grow forth a beautiful Flower in LUV
— Sammy Attoh
Introduction
“My Soul Is Outside” is not a private lament. It is a political document. It is the spiritual testimony of artists who came to America to create, only to be trapped in the shadows of illegality. It exposes the violence of a system that invites talent but denies belonging, that consumes creativity but refuses recognition, that benefits from the presence of artists while keeping their souls outside the gates of legal existence.
This poem is a witness to the slow suffocation of hope, the paralysis of waiting, and the exile of the human spirit. It speaks for those who believed America would be a sanctuary, and found instead a machinery that breaks the very souls it claims to welcome.
“My soul is outside”
A human being stands inside a nation, but their legal identity is forced to wait outside. The system welcomes their art but rejects their existence. A soul cannot enter where paperwork refuses to open the door.
“My body is paralyzed in the Love grave”
The paralysis is bureaucratic. It is the paralysis of waiting decades for recognition. The “Love grave” is the burial ground of promises made by a nation that benefits from the undocumented but refuses to embrace them.
“This sweet divinity candy of love / Has faded away!”
The early sweetness of hope dissolves under the weight of administrative silence. Hope is perishable in a system designed to delay.
“I sit silent at the Love funeral”
This is the funeral of trust in institutions. Silence becomes a survival strategy. The undocumented attend the burial of their expectations.
“I am empty, empty… Hmmmmmmmmmm!”
Emptiness is the exhaustion produced by years of waiting. The long exhale is the sound of a human spirit stretched thin by systemic neglect.
“My soul is outside” my Soul is outside
Repetition becomes indictment. The undocumented live in a permanent state of spiritual exile.
“With Donning night vision glasses”
Those forced into the shadows develop a different kind of sight — a survival vision sharpened by fear, uncertainty, and the constant threat of removal. They learn to read danger before it arrives, to sense shifts in policy, tone, or enforcement the way others sense changes in weather.
But this shadow‑vision comes at a cost. When a system pushes a soul outside its own body, the inner world collapses. The self fractures. The ground beneath becomes unstable.
Some seek refuge in alcohol, not out of indulgence, but because the bottle becomes the only place where the exiled soul can rest for a moment.
Some fall into drugs, not out of desire, but because numbness feels safer than the constant terror of being unseen, unprotected, unrecognized.
Some are driven into prostitution, not out of choice, but because survival demands a currency the system refuses to provide.
These are not moral failures. These are systemic consequences. When a nation denies a person the right to belong, it also denies them the right to remain whole.
Night vision becomes survival, but survival in the shadows breaks the human frame.
Night vision is not metaphor. It is the architecture of endurance in a world that has turned the soul outside and left the body to fend for itself.
“I could see the ghost-love depart”
The system’s affection evaporates when confronted with the reality of legal recognition. Ghost-love is the promise of America — bright in the brochure, dead in the paperwork.
“cold, silent, silent”
This is the temperature of bureaucracy. Cold in its indifference. Silent in its delays. Silent in its denials.
“My heart is divided between the Loved and the unloved”
The undocumented are embraced by communities but rejected by the state. This division is structural violence.
“Evanescent love ripen very early / Buuuuut decayed soon”
Hope ripens quickly in the early years of arrival. But hope decays when the system reveals its true nature: slow, indifferent, punitive, arbitrary.
“This bucket of my tears has taught / me today is more important than yesterday”
Yesterday is a graveyard of promises. Today becomes the only territory where dignity can be reclaimed.
“…and from this ashes of decayed love will / grow forth a beautiful Flower in LUV”
Even in the ruins of bureaucratic neglect, something refuses to die. Art grows. Resistance grows. Community grows. The flower is not optimism — it is defiance.
Conclusion
“My Soul Is Outside” is a universal indictment of systems that force human beings to live with their souls outside their own bodies. It exposes the spiritual cost of being present in a nation that benefits from one’s existence while denying one’s right to belong.