My Heart, Fellow Traveler
My heart, fellow traveler:
We have been ordered again to leave the country
It’s time again to walk foreign streets and knock on doors
To find someone who’ll let us in
It’s time again to look for friendly messengers
Ask passersby for directions home
We have to pass days and nights that will not end
We have to tell everyone who will not understand
But you know this story well:
Together we have endured the plagues
Of many sorrowing nights
Still, to be among the dead now
Would be a blessing
We would happily die
Were we to die once
Trace of Blood
Nowhere. Not anywhere
There’s no trace of blood
No red-handed killers
No blood-splattered sleeves
No rouge-lipped daggers
No dripping spear-points
No stain on the ground
No blemish on the sky
Nowhere. Not anywhere
There’s no trace left of this blood
No king claimed it
Nor heaven embraced it
No battle valorized it
No flag displayed it
It was crying out
Untended. Orphan blood
No one heard it or paid
Attention to its plight
No witness or testimony
Case dismissed
Born out of dust
It was fed to dust
Dust became its shrine
The Net and the Spear
Darkness is a net
Light is a spear
The day is a hunter
The night is a hunter
The world is a sea
In which people swim
Like fish, far away
From land
The world is a sea
From whose shores
Fisher-people stalk
The waves, holding nets
Carrying spears
When will it be my turn
Who knows?
Will they kill me
With the day’s long spear?
Or will they catch me
In the night’s black net?
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Nightfall
My old friend solitude visits me
To share my secrets, to pour my wine
We sit together, waiting for the moon
To rise and illuminate
Shades of your reflection
Behind the shadows
Window
They’ve planted my window with crosses
Each colored with the blood of a messiah
Each longing for god’s arrival
They slaughter spring clouds on one
And murder the moon on another
They fell the forked tree on one
Use one to kill the zephyr
Day after day these gods of love and beauty
Are brought to my cell doused in blood
Day after day their martyred bodies
Are ascended to heaven before my eyes
(Montgomery Jail)