I entered the world like most of my kind – whitewashed and nameless,
faceless yet searching for a face
to nibble on corn mashed scrapings of my time and place,
just hungry enough to pervade ignorance and grapple at the ripeness
of a more fruitful
truth
acknowledged in a vacuum
where dreams rot and decay and suffocate the eyes,
where an echo reverberates a menacing shriek
that tastes foul and perverse – dried sweat teared in blood
but it stays with me and my kind
alone in the haystack by God and his word
silenced by the power of an unlicensed scripture
these conditions fixate me, us
as they fixate the man behind the whip
as they fixate the land, the family, the working stick.
but I unlike most of my kind
have choked on an inch, and spit up a mile
and wielded a pen to inkblot a trial,
a trial constructed outside the vacuum
offering light, air and room to breathe
in the tangibility of humanity.