Word Simple
Harold J. Recinos
Word Simple
Copyright © 2017 Harold J. Recinos. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1947-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4575-3
ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4574-6
Manufactured in the U.S.A. July 10, 2018
Look
look,
at me from
where you
live,
laborer, cook,
dishwasher, housekeeper,
nanny, cashier,
janitor, trucker,
farm hand, brick layer,
carpenter, and retail clerk.
tell me you know
our Spanish tears,
the noise
they make,
and the
insolvency we
hardly ever
escape.
look at me
in the day’s
tired hours,
leaning against
the wall
on the corner,
waiting to
sit with
you
to talk
of things.
Shout
I imagine there are a thousand
ways to pour discouragement
out, to see light rise from ashes,
or find the other side of sadness
come up from watering eyes. when
I went up to ring the church bells,
to scare the nighttime ghosts down
the grieving streets, far from the
two old men sobbing, beyond the
aged cemetery now covered with
lilies, and past the piteous hearts
of children with hope turned to
dust, I wondered about the best
way to wrestle with this world
that prohibits us? surely, there are
a thousand ways to end these days
keeping us thirsty, hungry, hardened,
and afraid. if you come close take hold
of our hands, the dreams we make, and
have a look at the blood and bones that
moves when called by name. at
midnight, dash to the rooftop with
us to shout, enough!
Apologize
what time are the politicians
coming back to apologize for
ignoring the transparent truth,
the whimpering on the streets,
the apartments full of corpses
leaving behind a landslide of
grief? when will they shiver
in our imprisoned cold, kneel
with the martyrs of the Bethlehem
star, and sit on the stoops in the
August heat? I worry they have
not learned to say the right things,
spend their time boiling our tears,
and work in deep sleep. today, I
plan to send these letters written by the
dead that are full of sentences to make
them simply see!
Other Shores
those voices you do not hear,
faceless through all the years,
beaten down by batons, political
speech, angry cold stares, left
with festering wounds on the
filthy streets are newcomers here
who pushed from your dreams
mirror a overlooked history. the
grieving maids in your homes, the
gardeners who help your flowers
grow, the brick layers putting up
the fancy neighborhood mansions,
the wounded who sob emptying
the rubbish bins in the offices that
make this country rich, the children
who long for their deported parents
from unimaginable depths are like
you in the settling night searching
simply for a place to call sweet, sweet
home. in the ordinary days when you
cannot find time to listen to the words
shouting of another world, when you
turn away from dark hands that offer to
set you free, in the silences across
this earth, the revelations of detested
refugees, remember these lives and
all their other tongues more than the
management’s present inhumanity.
Say
the children
cry justice
beneath
heaven’s
dimming light,
a thing in
cruelty past
so many did
see. the older
generation with
near forgotten
dreams reaches
with the darkest
hands