i. I call on the wake of winter
to bring forth something fast
I can keep still no longer

ii. I wind my fingers
into the fabric of earth
tearing chunks out
to make a path to
where I need to go

iii. No cold nor dirt
will hold me back
as I make my way
faster than before
slower than I soon will

iv. I plant my feet
wiping soil-stained hands
onto the smooth cloth of my dress
I step forward
pulling my own roots free
I will hold myself back no longer

Deep within the dirt
I claw at the stars above
In need of their warmth
I graze their pulsating light
With cold, oaken fingertips

There is a person
   Who has feelings
      Who is troubled
         Who does not deserve to die

               There is a person
                  Who makes me sad
                      Who makes me mad
                          Who does not deserve to die



There is a person
Who I want to hurt
Who I want to put in the dirt
Who deserves to die

He reminds me of myself
He can never be me

“And only the azure painted sky to shake the rain from its sound,” so the plain falls, opening its mouth through a bed of headstones dotted with the hollowed trunks of magnolias and cedar at afternoon and that cameo of calamansi velour interwoven with the softest glaucous velvet. Inside that whirlpool of sacrosanct textiles a blur, that shocking shrill of coolness catches the skin- this hole-covered schmata oozing cesious acronychal threads pull tight across the hooves, branches, and stream. Only the thin repelling flume of winter’s height eschews this ianthine material over the sinews and map-lined bones. A corpse shortening its gaze, eyes stone-free, empty of nictitation. Nothing stings more than autumn’s filemot sins scraping sideways down a tiled balcony, and the dove’s beg like circus rats, shaped by the finite breaths of decade’s old poetry edging its moods like a bold inflammatory conflagration of the  de-evolution. While the fulvous trammeled dirt abounds.

some of us are bog people
we live with the snails and the maggots
making bacteria
we're suckers for substance
the dirt speaks to us
some of us are bog people
we hang with the microorganisms
making pilgrimages
we're slimey silt and silage
full-tilt and raw
the dirt wants us

dig it or dig it not
we can't help it
some of us are just bog people

.Digging for my roots,
Through fragrant soil,
Rocks scrape my wrists,
Moving deeper,
Entangled in the maze,
Rich with the past,
My ancestors are lost in the dirt,
Their names forgotten, but they are there in my DNA,
Marking me with their gifts, their trauma, their choices,
I am not one,
I am many.

11/2017 by Leah Oviedo @ ImpowerYou.org

I am dirt.
I am a constant in your life.
I am there to catch you when you fall.
I am there when you lay alone at night
struggling to feel something.
I am never fading
for I am dirt.

You are human.
Your body was not meant to touch stars.
You are meant to swallow fire
to burn cities to the ground.
You take me for granted because
You are human.

You are a human who found another human.
Another human who could do my job.
Another human who could do more.
Another human who stole you from me.
Yet you didn’t take them for granted.
Your human is a thief.

I thought I was dirt.
Now I am laying alone at night.
What am I feeling?
Dirt can’t feel, or can it?
I am not dirt.

I am human.