In your name, my country, I write today
For all the voices that cannot speak
For all the voices that are silenced
For all the wailing children unheard
For the mullahs and the pandits and the priests
For the politicians and the newsmakers
For the consumers and sharers of “news”
For all the women who bleed onto to the dry earth
For all the animals who are tortured
For the weak who toil in the burning sun
For the strong who drive their air-conditioned SUVs
For the singers, poets and artists
For the farmers, masons and carpenters
For the babies who will know only this way
For the old who remember how things were
For the ones caught in between
For the children and women *****
For the rapists drunk on power
For the believers and the non-believers
For all of us and all of them
In your name, my country, I weep
In your name, my country, I hope
In your name, my country, I believe

Walk with me, with calloused feet and weary eyes
Walk with me, through crowded marketplaces
Where they bargain over the price of love
And bodies are sold for a song

Walk with me, dusk is far away still
Our anklets are shackles, our souls a shroud
The market is a sea of sharks today
Their gleaming, moist teeth threaten and lure

Walk with me, my love, my heart, the air in my lungs
Let’s breathe freedom one last time
Where the tinkling laughter of a child is still heard
And the nights are still scented with jasmine

Walk with me, as our prices are fixed
For the sway in our hips, or the curve of our lips
Walk with me, dusk is approaching
And the auctioneer’s hammer is about to fall

When I look into the abyss,
Is it just as confused as I?
What does the dark depth ponder,
When it gazes into me?
Am I impossible?
Can it not even
Fathom all my pieces,
Or how they fit?
How cool the wind will blow -
But is the western sand
Still hot when the storm claws at my face
To scratch out my eyes?
Am I a seat to be despised,
Deposed like a future convict
Railing at the charges held over my head?
Why is it judging me
For not playing along with the game I had no part in creating?
I conject no scheme of ill intent.
Peace, I bid Thee well.
I go my way.

I did sleep in House of Whispers
True storm, enormous proportion
Voices heard not of lispers
Things spoken had no distortion
Sleep wrecked by bent contortion

Her breath broke in, spitting damage
Window, door, shuttered madness
Hurricane Sandy rained so ravage
Spirits moaned wailing sea of sadness
The mate looked on with ever gladness

Garbled jumble, gelatinous formation
Distinctly mocking circumstances
Sandy spoke of men lost by nation
Poet reminded how nature dances
Lives, houses, relations, left to chances

She broke trees, lifted sharks ashore
House of Whispers stood, listened
Her warnings raised tides, emoting more
Matey's  blue eyes spoke, glistened
Embraced evolved nature stiffened