If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable,
I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try..”
-Marianne Moore

When this world teeters on the abyss of emotion
and those I shepherd cannot find a way through the fog,
I try and hang a lamp from the front of this old rowboat
and paddle out slowly into the fen. That mind/shadow space
that surrounds and swallows their light.
I ask them what they need, and offer a steady hand
as they step onto the old planks. The children always begin
in silence but something about the way the water
Whispers to the wood, how the boat glides almost
unheard that always drives them to eventually speak
Of what carried them out beyond the threshold
of what one might bear stoically in public.

The oars provide some solace, something physical to pull
On that moves when these hands claim strength.
So much of what anchors us cannot be unshackled from skin.
They are loads we must drag along the deep until our hearts
forgive us for their weight. This is why I travel slowly, accepting
Silence as a cleverest answer, I ask my travellers where they are headed.
To acceptance they often say, or vengeance if they are not ready
To escape the shape of their shadows. I to dress in gloom, but
only when I put down the oars, while rowing there is no room
for night to claim my kingdom.  

Often there is nothing to do but listen to their stories
Let the sound of the lake lapping lapse into whatever tale is waiting
To be told, and sometimes just speaking its name is enough to banish
The wendigo that hunts behind teenage confidence, and sometimes their
Is nothing I can do but row. Rarely, they jump overboard but I
Weep but only when even their echoes have faded. Carve
their name into the planks in salt tear and let it mix with the bilge
And yet, there are those days that if I row just long enough, and can
Keep the silence within my cheeks, that suddenly a soft glow
Will rise from out of the darkness, bubble up like a lighting fish
and settle upon the bow. Those are the days the calluses are worth
Their calling. Those are the days the docks rise up from the mist long
Before fatigue creeps into these old bones and we spend the end
of the trip almost in each other’s arms, holding tightly to each other’s
Essence as my hands pull against the sea of time, as both of us heal,
And I call out goodbye as they step ashore, but they are already dressed
in gossamer glow, shining in the early morn, already wandering back into the light

We celebrate Juneteenth as if the war was not still being fought
Across news stations and echoes of Jefferson's dreams
The last slaves freed, but this country was never
Reconstructed, just patched up just replaced
Chains with debt, a Theseus ship of spoils pulled
From the wreckage of ****. And I sit the echoes
of police sirens slung like clubs across the backs of the
Boys that sat in my classroom and wondered
Why every white person they met always had
To yell so much. As if there was nothing at all
to be exchanged besides recreating Hegel’s dialectic.
As if the only way to win was in blood. And perhaps
That is what Juneteenth really teaches us, that blood
Shed long enough will lead to ghosts, whispered
Warnings we ignore. As if a million bodies buried across
The South was not enough of a reminder that we needed
To **** to have the enslaved seen as people. We celebrate the
Day we no longer had to bury bayonets in bodies
To treat humans as humans. And they still can't see it.
Don’t realize that if you take away the last plate of food,
That if you turn off the power, that if the dollar can't fill the tank
What comes from desperation is a blood-born tsunami
full of the ghosts of dead racists and stolen children,
full of collateral damage and crackheads hooked on crystal
                    Sold to them by the CIA.

This country cannot swallow the blood needed to clear its cup.
But at least we gonna barbeque and vote, and Dream, and read.
At least we gonna explain to the children that this was the day
The last slaves were freed when there are still hungry mouths to feed.
At least we gonna sit with Baldwin, or Miles, or Kendrick, and unhinge
Our throats like snakes swallowing what the storms sing from suffering.
At least we can carry that truth. If only for a day. If only to free the last
Mind slaves still believing that the war is over, the dead silent,
The constitution holy, the senate fair, the president controls gas prices,
The bullet not already loaded, the school doors not already locked,
The rich earned it, the news aint propaganda, the children martyrs
The blood in our bodies not singing requiems to the pain of our ancestors,
At least we gonna pretend that this country actually free.

Come forth, bury your skinny
necks in the full breath of sky
This world is a guillotine
falling and we sing of blades.

Perhaps then, before the flash,
the drifting listlessness of void,
we might dream ourselves
into a room full of our echos.

Masterpieces of memory,
paired and painted with
our love. Perhaps,
we might learn that prayer

Is the creation of something
beautiful. A single glance
across a crowded room,
a students smile, a poem

written with all the shades
of my mothers laughter.

We have broken ourselves for less
Then the dreams of our forefathers,
Their bones still singing in the dust.

Fallen tombstones bring faithful children
To whisper lullabies to angry ghosts.
Our hands are capable of so much.

Love comes to those who leave their
Palms open to the futures that
Whisper just as memories do, and yet

The dead are not silent,
They twist and burn
In the mirror of our eyes.

Their struggle sings through us,
Asking if we too are already buried,
or perhaps, if we the living will
speak for those who cannot.

The carvings on the stones
Read like scars
In this city that has bled for centuries
And I’m no clot to slow the flow

The veins of this country have been pricked
And punctured

And the skin ripples in the wind
Like a half flown flag

I have come here to bury my past
In the tombs of my fathers
And build a bridge
That will still be standing by morning

For now
I tread seconds in this liquid night
And press my palms
Against the scarred stones
As if maybe they might whisper me their secrets
And clot my bleeding history

When I went to Dachau
I expected death
I expected ghosts
And barbed wire
And ash
So much ash

I could not have expected
The still lingering stench of burnt hair
And the weight of a silence so heavy
That it sealed up the sky

A realization
That this is where I would have died
Had fate burdened me to be born
In those dark years

Inside Dachau
Something is still screaming so loud
You become deaf
The horror
The horror
It was my soul that tried to silence
The sorrow

Some part of me was buried there

Like the shifting ways the ocean reaches for the shore
Or maybe how summer sun falls gently upon the backs of children
You came into my life softly
With little more then a doves whisper to announce your name

I, like those before me, found solace in the illumination of your iris
And together we practiced the sacred art of breathing
While trying to remember the names of past loves
Who like smoke had twisted and spun its way out into nothingness  

We talked of the texture and shape of egos, and remembered what hides behind eyes while they rest shut

We watched the cars fly by and in their absence listened to the sounds of the city
The echoes and whispers, made by the subtlety of cell phones and tears of babies  

Like Juliet you sipped tea and watched time invade our bastion of an afternoon
As we sat and drew pictures of children whose faces had not yet be pulled south by time

We walked with the cool autumn breeze kissing the backs of our necks until the sky began to feel God’s hand reached up and painted it golden

We sat in perfect silence as the sky pulled on its dress of twilight
And let the soft sounds of dusk lead us back to my apartment

Darkness crept into the corners of the city and with it I remember you running the maze of my poems
As I worked quietly on some version of a home cooked meal

You ate my words as well as pasta that night and fell in love with something that pulsed far beneath my skin

I watched you reveal wings and float softly into bed
Discovering truths we spoke of things that have yet to be named
And forgot about redemption and the city and all the stars that surround it

But as dawn rose softly to the east
I awoke to see you sitting at the window
Staring into the sunrise
That moment has never left my dreams
The silhouette of your figure
The sky a pale gold
And the world softly siring
So far beneath us