crossed the border after
walking for miles with an
open mouth eating fresh
clean air and scraps of
corn and beans given to
me by old women who
promised to pray. alone,
at night, after staring for
awhile at a brilliant partial
moon, I pulled out the book
of lies to read a few lines to
see whether this time it would
convince me to believe in the
perfection on the other side of
the stars, in peace soon to come
this way like a blinking light at
a busy traffic corner that says
take the next turn to find the
promised land. I crossed the
border to discover a different
neverland, to live in a world
of stares that make God flinch,
work my farmers hands in city
days and stay out of sight each
long dark night. I left the place
where the air is brown, made it
to the choking English streets,
spend extra time in my large room
of memories, and look around for
loving kindness to hit me like a
glad verse from the book of psalms.
I crossed the border like Christ with
undocumented faith, a heart half-full
of doubt, and an old pocket Bible
deeply out of step. I crossed the
border to the land happy to march
strangers like me to the grave, while
yelling on the way there is no light
from heaven for wetbacks and spics!
The Scent
in the autumn of life age
delivers us to unsuspected
worlds where quietly we sit
to observe the leaves on the
fall trees gently touch earth.
we wonder about things left
undone, the pitch desires still
circling in our graying hearts,
the sweet bridges that brought
us far, the beauty that is much
deeper than changing form, flesh,
and bones. each day more loosely
laced, we feel the world young in
every part within, the memories
of reckless youth now giving us
sweet rest, and the things we love
alas not weak in each tasty living
breath. we live where time is no
longer complained, a place where
dreams sluggishly still make their
way into the light, the deeply hidden
spring that has held thousands of tears
and bathes us now with the scent of
heaven that was always near—this
we say delivers us!
The Storm
in our twenty-first century
the devastation of a storm
threatening to leave more
dead than anyone has the
strength to bury in soggy
ground exposes stars and
stripes sinking into a vast
sea. our flag placed on the
distant moon the hurt and
dying nightly see is like a
desert mirage for Spanish
speaking citizens who do not
count for the president as other
than spics! the sweet chariots
of God cannot even rescue the
condemned who live each day
afraid since the foul mouthed
head of a decaying democratic
State gives no crying damn for
flag or them!
The Sting
the history toward which
the country slides will be
memorized in the future
with indecorous words,
a bitter taste on tongues,
the sound of heaped up
wailing, and the Rose
Garden haunted by all
the anonymous dead in
the deserts, mountains,
cities,
