that could not
tolerate the hand-made
bricks laid on quiet
earth
convening
mindless hate
that falls like
hail from the
darkest sky
to make compassion
bleed.
there
was a time in
history
that dared not
imagine
the border
snapped shut
by a president
who never groaned
with guilt for
God.
there
was a time in
history
that
rejected all
goose-stepping
dreams.
rejoice,
there
will be a time
when
heaven’s
trumpets will
sound
to tumble
the wall
and
the fool
of all these
thing.
Been Gone
spent a whole lot of years gone
from here, disappeared in a pale
world that never gave a welcome
mat to people like me, and out
of pure spite leveled point-blank
hate my way. walked in too many
places that turned from created human
beings that wanted to secure sinister
damnation for the brown skinned poor,
lowly, excluded, left out and fucked up.
knocked on a whole lot of doors never
opened, lived the innocent years pursued
by unmentionable fear, the relentless odor
of death, and condemning threats from a white
world with dark seeping in its heart. closed
my eyes with every step, lined up in a few
special places for bread, listened to the old
women on the block with shrinking spines
tell me don’t give up, and carried the kindness
of Julia, Sonia, Joseph, Rudy, Tito, Carmen,
Tony, Shorty and Lefty now become
names on a block wall. spent a whole lot of
years gone from here, never forgetting to
scream for the tiny bones we buried and
the people the world refuses to see that
are so sweetly mine!
Follow Me
if you would walk with me
down this wide street into
another world, the people who
know how to prowl in the darkness,
who speak outright in the daylight,
and take God with them, will greet
you with smiles bright like flames. you’ll
be surprised to know they have been
looking for you, since the night an
old Brown lady yelled in the storefront
church on the corner gloria a Dios change
is coming, soon. if you like, we can stop
in to see this old woman who knows how
to pull apart the gods people have carefully
made, she will listen to the stories you
care to conjure, and then she will tell you
to face the closed door her children have
pounded for years. if you walk with me
a little further, to the bodega where the old
men once soldiers sit, you will discover from
them the stains on our democracy were
made with blood and all kinds of colored
skin. you may be surprised, by the close
of this stroll beneath the fat moon, you
may end up talking with new depth
into our light and dreams.
Rising Up
quietly,
I sat in the rising
light of this day absorbed
by news of a new president
who hardly gives a thought
to a future of peace, the people
who sing their children to sleep in
Spanish, the blameless refugees who
recall with prayer the God who lives
in the Middle East, the shouting eyes
of women marching the streets, and
the Black lives rising up to chase away
darkness from every side.
quietly,
I listened to the chirping birds around me
say in their very gentle ways, the great
Maker filled the lot of us with life to rob
the moron in power a lengthy Oval Office
stay, their songs filled me with the most
peculiar joy for in the faces of all those the
bellicose leader scorns with his indecorous
rhetoric of hate the richer light of the One
crowned with thorns staggers from the dark
to make a loving case.
quietly,
I recollected while pushing hope into the
tormented day, the new White House clay
will one day also turn to dust, have to reckon
with the angry breathe of God, and wonder
on the road to Peter’s Gate past the great
hills folding above the life settled from sea
to shining sea what awaits him—I chuckled
at the thought: A Wall!
The Stripper