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I will
go to heaven.
This I know
for the God I believe in is
the compassionate
Allah
is Merciful!
Everywhere,
neighbors elope with their Gods;
Those who entice
the elephant-headed Ganesha
Those who genuflect
with spite for cross and Christ
Those who bring blood
to the enigmatic
Legba
Those who journey over sand
to kiss the Kabba.
But
I will dance and sing the song of the rain
I will seduce and be seduced
I will make mischief and celebrate life
I will stone your house...again
For God can only be,
what
God is
Compassionate
Allah!
i
was there when
they killed him with the passion that gave him life,
arms sprawled like a Christ seduced and left to rot.
i was there to watch him...
drop with
a grace that comes only in death.
and
red
snaking from his earlobes
unto the heartless earth from which it came.
no roses or requiem, no dejuelo for the dead,
only outflung arms and eyes watching
--fearless!
*A worker who strikes
and is killed during the protest
What is a face but a mask behind
which another face hides?
A rose at sunrise, a
twig by sunset.
Sagging like a rock that faces
the wind,
a face murmers more than its owner will.
The
question of yours is, truly,
is your face truly yours?
O
black woman
black and sublime
blackest and purest of the earth's
secrets.
black hair that offers no history
to fortune tellers,
black lips through which come forth
the immortal fire of the soul,
black nipples that offer milk to
the youth of life,
and
black eyes that conceal themselves mischievously behind the shade of night.
O
black woman
black and strong
black is the naked geometry of
your body,
carried
from the Nile valley across landscapes that could not scar is beauty.
black
is
the eroticism you know,
heavy
and yielding like the conscience of a
black
subterranean
cave, hidden but vulnerable.
O
black woman
black and eternal...
Dear
Mama,
I
saw God today on the streets of Jerusalem
where
the earth drinks the blood of its
people.
Just a few years out of his cradle,
His
left arm pushed forward taking aim,
The
right drawn backwards, with a Molotov
aflame.
Mama,
If
you should tell the neighbors,
O
say that he was not too proud
--or
terrified.
Only
give thanks mama--
That was the day God died.
a man, his eye muscles
constricting, his pulse reduced
to an indistinguisable murmur, his heart stuttering, and his nostrils
widening as if to swallow the ugly universe, opens his mouth and whispers,
"one more moment to suffer and then I will
breathe again," and dies.
a single thread of invisibility
dangles
from the sky
the terrifying beauty
descends
fearlessly
anchorlike
it plummets
gracefully
assured by its grasping tentacles.
it
Stops
Spins
Somersaults and
Drops
Descends
Downwards
again
.
.
.
.
.
.
The
cat
waits.
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