old bible school stories,
imaging it a place like Mount
Sinai, looking for miles in the
dark for a revelation that would
give me endless reasons to hope
and dream. I walked down the
Grand Concourse in shoes with
holes, surrounded by people I
did not know, smiling at the sweet
sound of Spanish dropping from
their tongues, sometimes stopping
on the corner like it was a bank
on the river Jordan where slaves
wept for freedom, to cry like a
captive eager for the Promised
Land. I spent many hours alone
in cities far, near and across a
vast sea, waiting for the sweet
rolling of the river troubled from
above to see me and the earth’s
despised children to the other
side.
Dead Friends
I have survived longer than
the violent nights that left
me with mysterious gifts,
laden with the sound of your
voices that still haunt these
streets and only your sweet
traces know how to penetrate
my darkness. I have spent a
lifetime offering explanations
for the broken worlds God must
see, remembering the names of
our streets, the building numbers,
the public schools, the polished
nails worn by the Puerto Rican
girls, the smell of apartments
with food slowly cooking on
stoves, the Spanish words on cut
paper placed on bedroom altars
full of Saints with otherworldly
looks and the nightmares made
from hellish times. nothing is
like having you roam about in
my dreams, hearing you carefully
tell stories refined in the afterlife
and observing your lewd gestures
for God who took you from these
streets. I still hum the old tunes
we listened to until dawn every
Saturday on the stoop, sit quietly
watching evening shadows sink into
darkness and pray to make the
flowers on the fire escape send
touchable miracles.
Holy Word
the preachers of ancient texts
are guiding their thirsty flocks
to the nearest brooks in good
faith. the ungodly campaigns
in the changing hours, rejected
beggars on the church steps,
the forgotten poor with yokes
around their neck, the children
who stumbled away from mud
floor dwellings, mothers at the
gates crying for bread with infants
on their knees, the dry bone voices
filling the air, the innocent who
wait for water to become wine, the
tongues that mock the vulnerable
from sun up till down, hear today
from a preacher’s lips a holy word
about infidelities in the world still
delivering God to the cross.
White Masks
the children in the schoolroom
with old inkwell desks whose eyes
are bigger than curiosity stare at the
neatly pressed white teacher at the front
of the room. they learn to read history
mostly in black and white, while the
deep scars of weaving generations, the
near pulverized first nations, European
land theft, Mexican lynching, yanqui
peasant killing and the politicians who
looked away from black, brown, yellow
and red women raped never appear on a
public book page. the contract historians with
English names, their hard of hearing college
prodigies, never bother to put the bloody
side of colored history in their texts, which
infinitely overflow with grand white stories.
when
