I Should Have Followed You  

"Can I still call you Dorothea?"—even though the black and white lines in the paper reduce you to the habit you wore, arrange you into silence, a name and surname surrendered to the cloistering of lilies. Somewhere beyond this obituary, the grown children you once taught trace grief into their office desks, their minds recalling your half-remembered lessons. The others—those who once marched beside you—remember the compadre who chose devotion over struggle, who vanished into the ghost dust of old revolutionary dreams.  

Once, you were a believer who marched along Che and Fidel, a woman with a true north compass. You were never reckless, never a ghost in Havana’s dusk. You spent your nights writing, sealing letters to revolutionaries. You drank in hope like sugarcane.  

Then, the cause hardened. The slogans lost their breath. When Fidel called the people gusanos (worms) in a moment of drunkenness, you knew you must leave the revolution and Cuba behind. It was a certainty.  

You rooted yourself among the Miami exiles. We met on campus, arguing over a political opinion piece you wrote for the college newspaper. I argued that the Bay of Pigs operation was necessary. You wrote that it was a stupid exercise in democratic colonialism and was doomed to failure. And it was.  

Our love was a bickering affair. My adolescent jokes, mocking what I thought were your misplaced beliefs, chipped our foundation. I believed I was never lost. But I was orbiting a center I refused to name. After the revolution betrayed your faith, you retreated into a steady, quieter certainty—Jesus. He told you to press your palms into the smallest child’s hands. "Teach them lessons in your authentic voice," the command.  

I should have followed you. I could have stepped over the doubt that swelled between us, made a church of our mornings, sheltered in your certainty—if only you laughed more. If only I’d prayed less in jest.  

Now, my fig grows stubborn at my window, its roots strong, its love silent, and I, too, am nearing the end. I would light a candle, Dorothea—but what god still takes offerings from men like me? I will leave a hundred dollars in the box instead, fold your name into my palm, and call this devotion.

I am not broken; the world is.
Every day, it’s a new trend, whether worthless or rich,
Whether Black or white, dull or bright.
Every day is a new battle, a storm in a sea of dreams.
Dreams which get lost among the crowd of mindless bees.

The unfortunate truth is, the world favours aesthetics.
Whether in your work or in your deary beak.
Each day it’s a new goal, whether money, happiness, or ******,
But I ask, where is the genuine, the giddy, and the fulfilled?
Lost in the wildfire of fleeting faces and smoke-choked dreams?

Where are the joyful, the dreamers, and the poets?
Lost in the world of the weary, the cynic, and the skeptics?
But finally, I see the truth, the infallible truth—
Hidden behind the layers, lies, buzz, and noise,
That I am not broken; the world is.

We eat, we sleep, and we pray.
But who do we pray to?
Is it the ones who promise us salvation
but only give us disease, darkness, and blood?
Or promises of hope, love, and flair?

We starve, we wake, and we sacrifice.
But who do we sacrifice for?
For the ones who only take, take, and take,
and give not even a dime in return?
But only death, darkness, and blood.

I look at the heavens and see light,
but not lights of hope or redemption,
only lights made to blind us and bind us—
to show us we are unworthy of them, of the divine,
to make us feel like envying them is a crime.

I search wide and far for a story without any bar,
a story where they were selfless and not so afar,
a story to help us dream and reach the sky—
not act as silent observers of the moonless sky.
But all I hear are hopeless cries of mine.

Who are they to decide what we are, what I am?
Who are they to decide my fate and worth?
Who even are they, when they haven't felt the pain of existence?
only seen the suffering from their lofty thrones afar?
All I see is cruelty and worthless promises, hearts as black as tar.

Did you even hear me?
   I heard every single me, humbled?

Baseless turmoil I have carried
       for you was faithless.
Aged me fine in my youth
       groundless.
No longer I was more sure
      about the lore.
No doubt it was offshore,
     I have to build my own floor.

A space-age fortress of glitzy build
stands empty. It had once been filled
with shining futures of tinsel, milled
of bronze for a time that all would thrill.

How empty the future past now seems
behind the glass of wasted dreams:
Once polished steel now dimly gleams
and old high tech lies there unredeemed.

Its giant clock now standing still,
the hands unmoving, like hopes that will
remain as frozen in amber that’s filled
with flies of dreams: placebo pills.

I found the city a pitiless thing.
It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.
I use to sit on the sea wall that edged
my old college condo, the one I shared
with a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-
skipping the whistling part of his song
because my lips could never purse the
right tune- and watch the tide roll in
catching rainbows in the sun’s glint.

It  was the inhabitants I couldn’t take,
all rude and loud, smelling of salt
and stale fish scales and crab shells,
so snared in tiny toils, frail and idle,
their itching needs thirsty and *****.  
I lost my wonder in the traffic dust,
the night haze and starless nights.
I avoided touching that life less
it should defile me in its lost light,
night terrors and phantasms.

Then, in the small church in
the out of the way corner,
I found her, a strange vision
trembling, ready to emerge
just past the reach of my mind
and the urge of my will. She existed
beyond all jaded aims and
drab  dissemblements,
something unfounded, unbuilt
but ready, waiting to be built on.

On my birthday she bought me
a lounge chair to grace my
unfurnished balcony, on the
very day I purchased my own.
And there we sat (my desire),
watching the city unseal itself
across from me in a sweltering love,
constantly revealed, being
forever built and rebuilt on
in pain and unfathomable will.

Fifty years ago, the future came,
built in concrete, tile, and bright lights,
underground station, undergirding the fame
of this city, adding to its manifold sights.

Now the future’s a place that smells of stale beer,
barely lit by futuristic lamps in disrepair,
wallpapered in graffiti, strewn with gear
of the pale homeless who’ve made this their lair.

They, like this chipped, grimy, forsaken place
are left in the dust of our dreams’ mercury pace.

To capture, nurse, and, hold,
the unfairness of it all.
The rapturous, coal-
heartedness, of Hellish
snares, beneath, the Mall.
When, afterwards, those
cauldrons, spout nightly
mares, of, bridled gall.
The captor cursed, his embold-
ened heir, is, a;
hairless toupee,
sheared, and, effortlessly, shorn.

The flesh, is, pierced,
and, punctured, by, the
blade of wickedness.
A chest, buried, by, the weir
-y, encumbered. Wreaths are
laid, by, Triffid's Bliss.
Sounds of stress, fierce,
and, repugnant, line, the
glades, of, Inner Wist.
As, the Rest, rely on tears,
while, torn asunder, cutting
their way, through, thicker mist.

The end,
much like, the start,
starts with,
a flashing in the pan.
As, the friend-
ship sunk, apart,
embarks, for Unhappiness,
with, Sad.
Send your dogged
embittered bark,
hearts hear no sorries,
in a lost, unlistened land.
And, you can't mend
a broken heart,
when broken hearts
is all we've had.

© poormansdreams