We meet adversity,
  friend or foe

One to run from,
  the other to know

Their dress identical,
  intention the same

Accepted—Rejected,
  the truth is renamed

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

I swear I could hear someone scratching on the lid of their coffin
I went back the next day and I swear it got weaker
until the day after when it had stopped. completely.

What kind of a World do you want to live in?
asked the Wolf of the Lamb.

Such vehemence
For immigrants
Border patrol
Vigilance
I never knew
A human being
Could be illegal

I knew a poet once.

He was the top of a tall mountain
of all the best words.

Fighting.

His words were a war
against social injustice
of all times.

His face was beautiful
with scars and lines
that remembered
every battle.

There was Issa, and a bowl of soup.
I remember the fly that buzzed
in the windshield
and tears behind sunglasses.

Why do poets set
like suns?

I had a vision once

jeeps and dust
an apocalyptic America
and I was scared

this morning I stood in the shower
thinking
maybe I should tell my daughter
to let her hair grow
to pretend to have a boyfriend

our system of checks and balances
is being stomped on
civil liberties
and inalienable rights
are extinct

psychic vision
is poised to become reality
and I never imagined
it would be our own government
holding us hostage