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things are crusting,breaking
mud dun-colored
cracks in sheets like pottery
thrown by the world in the shape of drought
arid, dry and barren
crunching beneath my old boots
they have carried me well nigh seventy years
of wandering

I stamp down to break the honeycomb
of parched mud
some syrup of past rains
oozes through
now limned in dust
forgotten
an echo of rain

a memory rises up sharp and sudden
your face lined and creased in grief
your mouth moving
my ears frozen
silence in my dead heart
an echo
of us
C Patricia Sky Bellefleur 2017
shirring down
rain slides whispering through the grasses
clings to every drying flower head gone to seed
bushes tightly bunched
against the stalking winter wind
buffalo herding round
circling the remains of autumn
summer lost to us all

leaves
racing for cover
freed from tree prisons
off on walkabout
seeking some adventure
bound for bonfires
or compost mountains
or gathering in communion against my garden wall
gossiping in their secret leafy language
secrets of the seasons
mysteries of the Earth
Mother tongue
wet is this silver morning
wet with life
C Patricia Sky Bellefleur
 Dec 2017 Jamal Abboud
Scarlet M
I can only ever
appear unbroken
in front of
other people’s eyes.

Inside, all I see
is a tangled line
of confusion,
in a pile of
never ending depression.
i have no idea how many hours she toiled
in the community kitchen before i arrived,
but she’d made a *** of tofu stew, a bowl
of rice and beans, some spinach lasagna
soaked in marinara, hummus
and daiya cheese sandwiches.
diligent and dutiful,
without question,
without expectation.

an hour later, we stood in Lykes Gaslight Park,
doling out food to the houseless folks
who’d lined up for a vegan meal
when, out of the blue, a well-dressed
college student swaggered up to us,
his smile shimmering, and asked
what we were doing.

she brushed a loose strand
of hair behind one ear,
smearing a bit of sauce
across her cheek,
and said, “we are here to live
as if we are already free.”

they were sharing food too,
he explained, which was all well
and good. but we couldn’t help but notice
they’d never set foot here in the past,
that they only came out
when the season
passed into the holidays.

“you know,” he told us,
“you might not realize,
but the Lord Jesus Christ
is using you for the gospel.”
which seemed rather strange,
given that he’d be back
in his sanctuary before the year
was out, raising his hands
and praising his dead god
instead of standing beside us
every Tuesday and Saturday,
sharing.

but we remember the legacy
of the radical Nazarene,
the anarchic revolutionary
who fed five thousand—
a conquest of bread
with nothing but a few loaves
and some fish.
if you listen closely,
you can still hear him whispering,
“take what you need,
give what you can.”

we carry a new world
in our hearts and heads.
we don’t feed the hungry
to win a one-way trip to heaven.  
so when you forget
about the poor you use as a prop,
we godless few will remain
in the streets until every belly’s full
and capitalism collapses—
risking arrest, fighting abuse,
addiction and empty stomachs.
Food Not Bombs
When we first met
I felt the stars align
So I placed my bet
That day you would be mine

I took your hand
Leading you across the sky
Over sea and land
Into our special time

It can be said
That I am yours and you are mine
Where I owe a debt
To those stars when they aligned
 Dec 2017 Jamal Abboud
Viany
Wings
 Dec 2017 Jamal Abboud
Viany
White Doves,
Fly out of her
Broken Heart..
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