from confederate soldier to betrothed

If by doom,
Or if by dawn
I cease to wake,
And if your side
I never to make,
Remember only
Of things not thought
But done for you.

For as I dream
Of your waking
Of your song
Your tight embrace
I hope upon hope
To break through to
Our reality sought,
Where ne'er we part
And time allows
My heart to give
To you, beloved
My everything always.

ravishing

The water
Filling the Caspian
Boils
And the lascivious steam
Rises
Dissolves the swollen sky,
Bursting storm clouds,
And showering the steppes
In a mad caress.

The dark, dripping Tatar hands
Seize the dusty, dry
Parched Persian earth
And strangle the sand
Yellow and frail
Into muddy dirt,
Joyous soil.

And in weeks,
It blooms.

infancy

Thick fog of childhood,
Thin blanket of memory,
Foghorn sounding in the harbor,
And train-whistle blowing through the air -

Gray Wolf who visits our bedsides,
Whispers our fears
Softly,
Gently.

Black Sheep who nuzzles against us,
Comforts us
In our dreams.

Before I could speak,
I could listen.
Before I could see,
I could imagine,
I could feel.

Color,
Shape,
Warmth -
Watercolors flowing,
Blurring possibility.

My cry
Entering this world
Was not of sadness,
But of ecstasy.

oasis

In the sweltering blaze of Phoenix summer
The birds fall from tree, sky and nest
And meet in communion
Around the water
Pooled
Across a suburban streetcorner,
The doves to drink
The pigeons to bathe
And the grackle
To scare them all away.

levantines

How long, my friend?
O, how long has it been?
Since we've really laughed together
How long has it been?

My cousin
We are lost
And there's nowhere in the world
We can be friends

Now we are different
Now we are hungry
Now we are broken
Now we are severed

And now
Are we finished?

What's left for us, brother?
What's left of our past?
Our families are killing,
And our children are killed

Our art is a-mess
Our cities a-ruin
And nothing is left
For our hatred to maim.

And even till death
And even through pain
I cannot stop loving
Stop crying for you

la defensa del campo

Sunrise comes slowly,
shouldering
the weight of careless rain.
The mourning doves,
hungry but frightened,
wade cautiously
across damp leaves.
Within the drowned earth,
through muddy soil,
the feast rises,
and the birds reap
what has been sown.

The man,
startled out of dreams
of fertile land
and fertile life
by the coarse call to arms
of the emboldened cockerel.
His eyes
bear the weight
of years of labor,
and his throat
is cracked,
dry as the floor
of the Sonora.

The man
watches the battalion
of hungry creatures
scorching the earth,
undoing the week's work,
the week's worth.
He reaches for his gun
and pours into the flooded field.
He fires a round,
the army disperses,
and the fort
has been held -
Labor Omnia Vincit.

okc

Seven and a half years now
since everything changed
before I understood
what I already had.

The Atlantic
still a stranger to me,
how could I
understand?

The burning wreckage,
abstract and sterile
it's full terror
for me only living
in a child's imagination.

Eight and a half years now
since hopes vanished
where there's something I can have
that I will never want.

West of the Jordan
always alien to me
the estranged family
where I am loved
but not wanted.

Young men and women
marching over endless sand
burning coastlands
an industrial waste
still beautiful in my heart.

Fourteen years now
since the plains
caught aflame,
roots of my family
charred by the lightning
our ears deafened
by the thunder.

No face of evil
to remember
but one of our own.

And still
no zealot from abroad
can frighten me
like him.