for signs
that read
Lord of Mercy,
tell these
people
full of
hate, America,
the beautiful,
so beautiful
too with me.
The Place
they read the English clocks made
in China, always go to work on time,
play the lottery for a big hit, never complain
of a thing, walk the unknown streets, send their
kids to schools offering books with a hundred pages
missing, bury their dead in cheap wood with grief
fixed to their wrinkled faces, breathe the angry air
telling them how to misspell their names, live to
see poverty abounding from generation to the
next, know hunger, illness, fatigue, work that keeps
them close to death, and listen to the devilish cries
of hate that surrounds them in a forgotten place so
carefully slighted by all your Gods. they lean into
the light of day, stand in the quiet of night, kneel
in prayer in sparsely furnished rooms, talk
with ghostly listeners, and wait for an answer to
their cries from a world unwilling to deliver even
a hint of slanting light. when the children ask what
dreams will come for them, what will you whisper
into their beautiful innocent ears?
Night
every night she sat
at the kitchen table
eating bread, her old age
telling me not to close
the door, and listen to her
closely for truth. she was
like a book checked out of
an old library before my eyes
with a soul deeper than a
city beggar’s cup. we sat
quietly at the table listening
to the wind howl outside the
window, the radiator talking in
the cold space like it was reading
a Charles Dickens’ novel. then,
in silence beyond help, the elderly
woman told me she dreamed her
teen son alive again in the apartment
saying to her, “mother.” I remember
that night so clearly, we looked at old
photographs that adored hearing her
speak, images frozen in time, with
sounds of crying and laughter roaming
in the old ladies heart. that night, I
pleaded to God above let this woman
know sweet love and everlasting
peace.
Old Revolutionaries
there is a place for times like this
where old revolutionaries thought
gone still gather to talk about how
they overcame persecuting days in
another country. for decades they
have roamed our city streets in the
shadows quietly observing how the
truth that helped make them more
human is so carefully crushed now
by an authoritarian flattery that has
seduced the nation to a culture of
threat with well-placed lies ready
to violently pounce on the innocent
without consequence. I sat on the
stoop with these old rebels wondering
out loud with them what it would mean
to live unafraid from those you have
called your own? last night with these
old friends, I opened the Bible searching
with a flashlight for a few lines to speak
to our times only to find pages full of words
that pulled back all the blinds and questioned
the piety of this season of hate. these old
insurrectionists who have lived for so long
among those who want to do them in,
still say in this haunted world a new
day will come—so I will remain with them
measuring each day with the intelligence that
offers generous lasting change.
The Walk
let us walk beneath the
half-moon sky in search
of deserted streets, to the
little park on the other side
of Southern Boulevard, the
grandmothers love to visit
to mutter prayers and talk
of everything. let us sit on
a bench to watch the cross
town bus makes it way down
the block with passengers riding
sideways wearing faces wrinkled
by years of trouble, then throw
bread at the unruly pigeons, and
talk with Hank the wino who
after a pint of Midnight Express
recites lines written by the lonely
men who live under the bridge.
let us open our ill at ease eyes to
see the things here that are hardly
understood, the broken windows
of tenements, the gutted cars on
the streets, the children who play
in shortened years, the furnished
rooms with hearts stretched sad,
the rubble of the empty lots, and
congas pounding fatalistic beats
at the Ortiz Funeral home. let us
walk all night long until we find
a drop of twisted light to dry our
damp souls and to rattle us to the
very bottom of our feet.
The