Sunday, January 27, 2013

I am a Book



Once, at my first
I had straight edges
Clean pages
All was perfectly aligned.

But through the rain
My spine has bent,
Pages warped,
Whites soiled,
Never to return

Until, recycled, you find
New words, new hands.
Some say it showed character,
But it reads like regret.

Next time I will don a sleeve
Since you never know
When the rains will come,
Then suffer the age of my fiber.


Sunday, January 20, 2013

In the Shower



Black water runs down
From dirty ears I scrub,
Scum from a soul dragged through the dirt.

I feel a pain in my breast
Not one from running too far
Or unbalanced health,
One of a neglect of understanding
Or the importance of knowing what it was.

If emotion is the blood flow of my heart
Then you have tried to halt it,
Not wanting to hear
About complications on the ground
Trying to keep clean, uncalloused hands
From manure that has blown
Into our faces the more we shovel.

To the soil we will burry the shit
Of your ignorance, to be transformed
Into life-giving incentives, to hold
Water with which a seed can grow
Or by which I can be cleaned again.


Sunday, January 13, 2013

With Community There’s Politics



So don’t get involved if you can’t dance.
Never cease to watch your back,
The janjaweed are coming to kill
The crops and rape the community.

Bastard orphans will roam the streets
As families are broken and redefined
Based on loyalties and who can keep
Their head down the lowest.

Look to the border if you make one false move.
They are always watching.
They know all you do.
Your ancestors will be told the pettiest
Of misdeeds, regulating you to death.

Don’t try to grow your own food,
You’re not to have a will.
Don’t think to travel by night,
You’ll keep record of your every step.

This is not your land,
But make yourself at home.


Sunday, January 6, 2013

I Thought Things Were Turning Around



The hope was as false as thinking
With all your heart that the sun
Wouldn’t set on the horizon but in mid-day
Decide to go backwards to bed,

Like believing that the ocean will have its fill
Of river water and stop its own evaporation
Denying the clouds their formation
Denying the soil its quench
Denying the basins their lakes,

Like thinking a generation could decide
Not to have children ending the whole human enterprise,
None of which are probable nor graceful.

What we’re left with are lungs that are pained
To supply oxygen to an ailing heart
That has all but stopped pumping itself
To keep a mind alive to know these wearisome things,
That change at the most fundamental levels
Is as impossible for creation as for a person.