i don’t know why each dawn we
want to rise and shine is always wrinkled by
a new age of disappointment.
i want to run past the night and teach
morning another trick of rising. but the night
is a long journey.
and repose is the younger brother of death.
because i fear if young days will
ever visit us again. i think
again. i think tran sition.
i empty troubled nights into my left eye. i want to
stand over this shipwreck of a country and the storm.
like Jesus. and say peace be still.
it is easy if dreams do not come with
masquerades. but twenty million men
and twenty million contentions will rise and say peace
be stolen.
they say war. war. war. war.
and at the family altar, if mother
will wheel us aggressively into a prayer of warfare
against the devil.
i know it is an irony— the mistake of being born
into a country like this.
