no woman no cry.


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No Woman, No Cry


You of the female tribe,
through time have learned to redefine
visions of heaven.
For hell is an empty cupboard
where mothers turn kitchen tables into altars,
head resting on clasped hands,
praying for a bit of food
to fill the empty bellies of babies.

You beg for salvation from bill collectors
and avoid the endless ring of phones;
stacks of envelopes that equate what you owe
with who you are.
You, whose daughters
give birth to still-born dreams,
bear fruits of labor
swinging from vines that bind you to this place.

Here in the wasteland of broken homes
you watch and wait
from behind cracked windows,
your elbows
wearing grooves into sills;
eyes glassy, body still,
and nose pressed into pane.

Oh Mary, don't you weep;
Joseph is never coming home.
But your bones are strong enough
to bear the weight
of all he has left behind.

Retreat from the window
instead, look inside.
The roots of strength
lie within
holy trinity re-defined
as mother and child and the spirit that guides,
the patron saint of single-parent lives.

And this is a psalm for you;
a balm to soothe the wounds
of walking the road alone,
two feet filling four shoes.
This path, you did not choose
but you will bear it was your own
for that's what strong women do;
back broken yet head held high,
knowing the future relies on you.


strawberry fields soliloquy


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Strawberry Field Soliloquy

The summer sun
plows a trail across the sky
and I
am bent low,
the heat burning stories into skin.
I am the emaciated dream
of past generations
in movement towards a future
that we have yet to taste.

For my tongue knows only of dirt and tears
and years of knees into ground,
hand thrust deep down into green,
find the buried treasure,
pick,
and repeat.

These feet have tread miles,
blistered and cracked,
yet my path leads me back
to the beginning of the line.
Each season
nothing seems to change but the time.

I water these fields with tears,
and harvest them with my sweat.
Can you taste it?
My blood,
in the deep red of the sweet flesh.
La fruta del diablo
The Devil's fruit
a top angel food cake,
bite in and feel the fields
bleeding onto your lip
dribble down chin
and drip.

Silent cries
you'll never recognize
as the solemn songs of my people.

Mi familia me llaman Esperanza
My family calls me Esperanza.
The name, it means hope
but I was born into a lie;
for so quickly it dies,
withered like the fruit
we didn't reach in enough time.

I am the silent fortress of deferred dreams,
the one born to change things,
the hope of the future,
but the hands of a slave,
for the devil's fruit
will always have its way.

Leaving my name
to rot
in strawberry fields
forever.





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