If you have to switch between
Loving her and loving yourself
If you cannot do both at once
If she isn't obsessed with the way
You trace you own skin
With the gentlest of hands
Just as she adores the touch
Of your fingers on her cheek
Is it really the kind of love
You want to feel?

After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun

Your touch sets my surface aflame
Nervous signals flashing
Fingers searching for a purpose
Steaming furnace requires spoking
Radiation heats our home
With ancient bodies, glowing coals
Fading colors fuming red
Forming drops of salty liquid
Pours from porous epidermis
Falling down from heavens forces
Pulsing, throbbing, pressure rises
Reaching to God, fulfilled desires

Yes, they don't invite me to dinner
They look at me strangely
Like I'm in the zoo
And they've paid to see
I smile
Fake,
Hope it was worth the money
I don't want your
overweight hubby,
Honey,
I'm the goodbye girl
Touch me,


Then leave

Once there was a boy all dreamy-eyed questioning  where in life he'd go
Now, he is a young man and still he doesn't know

I love her
Not in a ****** way, but
She's my friend, my friend
She helps me so much
For 7 years Ive known her
Laughed and cried with her
She hugs me and my daughter
Makes sure my house is in order
She has capabilities that I do not
I fear for her
She isn't supposed to be here
With her brown skin and Spanish tongue
She works hard
And I love her
And I'm so afraid for her
I don't understand fences
Or "papers of belonging", citizenship
I was born privileged
Free and white
In America
Because my ancestor came here 340 years ago
And begat generation after generation of my blood
I wonder if he had to have papers?
Her journey here nearly killed her
Sent by her mother, with a bottle of water and an aluminum foil wrapped sheep sandwich
Across the dessert
For just the idea of a better life
She was 16 Then
I love her
And by the GOD that loves every colour and nation,
I'll marry her before I let her be dragged into one of those big vans they put "illegals" in

Your lies were pregnant
They gave birth to false dreams
And now here I am,
A grandmother to broken promises