“but if you have to move your best friend’s body…
…you’re on your own.”

Your best friend dies
Before your eyes
Somehow stays alive
Then what?

***** salt-licked hair
Brittle and frayed by medicine
World’s unfathomable weight
Trembling beneath the Wisdom Tree

Her whole being crumples (arrugar)
But her life-force remains intact
Body bone
Running on spirit reserves
Why is that?

She stands and cries
Staring into ether
I sit
Wringing my hands

Her tears strike the ground
In tree-gecko unison

'''

Pacific parasite super-strains
Blood coated throat
The full range of abuse’s color on all fronts
for decades
Attempted assaults, ****
Dengue
Giant Centipede venom to the skull

But worst of all
Rootlessness and fear

the monkey on her back
had a monkey on its back
   and was smoking a cigarette

'''

Have you ever seen someone
Completely broken?

Corpsic shell of a woman
Gaunt, wan in the tropics

“Don’t put your trust in walls…
…walls will only crush you when they fall”

Brick-bludgeoned body
The shrapnel lay like
Sun scorched
Novice-woven baskets
At her feet

But now she can see
And breath
Real breath

'''
Genocide’s a *****, yes.

Africans seem fatalistic to Americans
Baby boy body, Grandpa human- shield

“They’re your babies”
Short-lived, yes
But now they have peace

Witnesses still weave the jungle

What do you do with a friend who’s
Seen real atrocity? Evil?

'''

I’m learning.

Prayer is power
Will transcends the concrete (Bunkle, too.)

She serves realness only
Her seeking hands unweave the sacred
Time is of no luxury right now

Serve people through love
and Grace awaits discovery

'''
I’ve never carried a bleeding body.
I needn’t “fear the terror by night,
Nor the arrow by day”

But I saw someone perish
And resurrect

What a gift
What a gift

Gubaadagem, Tinmad.

how lonely sits
the city says
lamentations

guess this mouse has what you americans call post traumatic
stress disorder,
think of it more like
a path for the
eyes.

one where eyes are finally forced away
from the works of hands
by the knock knock
knocking on
heaven's door,
everybody's saying,
hodi hapa? something's
wrong if no one's answering; tonight.

my neighbor whose
name is eej (for
real) came to
the hut with
his friend.

i said do you
have siblings
he said
i did

oh

said i

you are living
my worst nightmare
one thing about an african

childhood, they say fatalism, you say you
would think about death too
and who knows

what you'd
look
like

tonight by the bagel van i said bunkle
i gotta problem
what's your problem said he
well i think i'm not wearing enough colors
no said he you're missing a bright splash in the orange red family

who knows what we all look like
inside the infinite space
of our souls

wonder if
blue means purity or
green means beauty
or red means strength
or love
or love

well
we all look
pretty much
the same asleep

hatred doesn't look
different in one
eye or another

but why does
it have to
be in the
eyes of
anyone

this mouse has
been asking
since
child
hood

why
why
why.

the cruelty

but
yet
still
and
for
ever

(you always did care for me yeah
you always did share with me yeah)

you always make me laugh, still

the book of jonah makes me
think of sea legs
and just everything,
you know all
the palm trees
huts, nonvoices
of our lives

the blessings rain down
an ocean sunsetting
on an Ocean sky.

siblings

be strong the
good kind of
dangerous

is
the



fire

i told bunkle,
if dostoyevsky's right
that the person

god trusts is
the one to
whom he gives

a lot of
pain, think he
trusted us too

much this time,
he said well
we gotta trust

him he knows
what he's going
to do with

all of this
i looked down
at my sweatpants

someone other than
me and none other
than me had

written you say
you have faith,
where is it?

save Your people

...save me
god, i don't
have much left

but bruises today,
it hurts to
wake up it

hurts to try
to sleep it
hurts to think