Joudah - Alight

Over treasure and land some texts will say it had Little to do with slavery or the newly Discovered yellow planet Few men watched the glaciers recede From shuttles they had built During the hemorrhage years When theyd gathered all the genes down from the ledges Ill be a fig or a sycamore tree Or without hands By then doctors and poets Would have found a cure for prayer * Or have you shoved the door shut In the face of the dark? Have you body and light the trap Of retribution doing unto you What it does to others? You protest In the streets and papers and I leave For a faraway land Where with pill and scalpel And a distant reckoning If he should lick his lips Or clench his fist I shall find his second left toe Infected puffy From a bump Ill lance it and squeeze Out the pus and offer Him an antibiotic I cant refuse therefore I am * The first time I saw you it was hot I was fed up The second time your wife gave birth to a macerated boy I had nothing to tell you About letting go of the dying In the morning you were gone Had carried your father back to your house His cracked skull I didnt know that was your wife When I raised my voice To those who were praying From behind the wall to keep it down I was trying to listen to your babys heartbeat With a gadget a century old * Anemic From so much loss giving birth If you give blood in the desert you wont Get it back not your iron pills or magic hat I put your thin Hemoglobin up to the light and called out To the donors Donors If you want to know your blood type And its a match You must donate Few came some indifferent to my condition Not having heard of it And willing anyhow * And the world is south The night a bandit with gasoline And Im your dancing lizard mirth I put my one arm up And bring my one foot down on a hot zinc top The nearest hospital was the dawn She didnt know her daughter on her back was The entry wound and she the exit She ran a brothel so The officer said Where the rebels came and went And ran into the government boys Her girls femur the size of the bullet * He was from the other side rumors Had a bullet through his left arm Or had it bitten off by a camel A camel elephant of the desert never forgets what you are If you arent kind to it When I met him his bladder was the size Of a watermelon his prostate a cantaloupe You cannot catheterize A man forever Every hour on the hour his left arm stump Hanging his good arm holding His penis his buttocks in deep squeeze A charge from the rear without spillage This poor murderous thief desperately single Handedly began slapping his own ass As if he were dashing a stallion in a raid On some unarmed village * The mind in the field The brine in the field Whether I Is a diphthong codependent on What isnt there to stay in the field The good you act is equal To the good you doubt Most have lost many You are either prosperous Or veteran in the field * A mother offers not necessarily Sells her one-eyed son For an education if youll bring him back And stone dust for one With congenital illness And little boy with malaria Same old gas Money mixed with blood Transfusion the doctors perfect record broken Nobility of taking A life you Who must walk to and from your house The jeeps upkeep The donkey-cart ambulance * One boot left behind The one-boot photo I wanted On a book military black the quad a clinics Special Forces spun By his dangling heels from The pickup truck rushed To a central town altered combative With two scalp lacerations and blood In his auditory canal I was a lover of loss I tossed The boot in the capital of suffering