Feeding the soul

Cesar Chavez I said I feed at the body and poets feed the spirit. Sometimes the body, and darkness, turns towards the dawn stretched on the island. The perfection of angels, paper planes wrestling with the wind, a tattoo of rain. The hot and bothered sun floats in a mechanical sky of heated beauty, calling at smog, calling at graffiti. Drunken stars rise in the mist. Like bullets they pierce the night. No wings in the barrios. Sunrise. 

Make a list of body parts, to save the prisoner, think of water torture. It’s impossible to say, turning 50. There’s only time for a short kiss. Then it’s time to go home and rinse off the soul. We are all living on stolen land, said Ishmael Reed, Oakland‘s original son. Merritt hated writers he called them scribblers. Do you want to rename the lake Peralta? The local historians remember Kit Carson, but we remember you. The teeth of mountains ground down by the four winds. To be tribe is to be without property. How to hold the two thoughts in your head without it exploding, knowing that on the other side, we mark our time with their time.

2012