Following you all these years
thinking that perhaps I would
one day overtake you on this
wandering path travelled so long.

I never did make it to Bethlehem
nor kept any other of the
hundred promises that I've made
to so many, some spoken aloud
and some made silently.

Of all the lives these other
pilgrims say I have touched,
I never could seem to
touch yours.

I am old now, and weary
of the sands and the winds,
beautiful as they are I
am sure that they also
have tired of me.

Where is there left to go?
I know now that I will never
find you, will never
be found by you,
weeping on the edge
of some oasis.

I have no answers
to my own questions
nor do I think does
anyone else upon this
road that leads where
all others do.

There are two rivers within my heart
one flowing toward the future
and one toward the past.

There are two worlds I live in
one of the everyday materiel mundane
and one of something I have no words for.

Did I not bathe in the sweet waters
of both rivers flowing?
Do I not live within both worlds,
paying bills and yet loving with all my soul?

born poverty stricken, 
she lay her head on no mattress..
still she sung along to mary j. blige, like religious practice..

Stronger with each tear was the motto,
&so; she shed..
Because its hard to have dreams when you don't have a bed..

Its hard to have food for thought when you cant afford bread.
& the local Goodwill is dead..

Her speech was absurdly intact, & well spoken.
you would assume a girl trapped like that, wouldn't be open,
Yet.
Just 14, she showed potential of a graduate, beyond bachelors.
&& in our city record deals are the only time we owned Masters.

beneath those hazel eyes. there lies an old soul,
told, 
by her surroundings her future was a pole. 
bold, 
in her approach, how she stripped away the cold.
now dances in the daisies, dodging Hades, never sold.

&this; is no figment of imagination,
how her eyes hazel pigment, 
had the power to judge a nation.

Because she woke up daily, prepared as **** for that math test..
Though she was born poverty stricken, lay her head on no mattress..




-afj

Ladies and Gentleman, esteemed friends and collaborators, we find ourselves beset once more by a particular individual's overwhelmingly perverse actions of self-aggrandizement. Yes indeed, there is a stranger here among us, a purveyor of hate and dismissal, lauding his own horrifying mimicry of poetry as the makings of a legend. I will not foul my words by speaking his thrice-accursed name, and in truth, there is no need. Any one of us who has found our heart-wrought pages smeared by the childish, aristocratic and may I say it, disgusting blabberings of this ill-begotten rake shall know exactly of whom it is I speak. And I speak in ernest, terrible ernest, against this self-proclaimed genius against whom we worthless ants are compared as to a god. And in the name of humanitas and libertas we tolerate his vile ravings and insensate curses thrown toward us as if we were nothing but cattle. Why? Because we believe in something that he will never be able to understand or appreciate, the very concept of a community throws him into confusion and fear. People are dying in the streets in the name of everything that we here stand for and he has the audacity, nay, the pompousness to assault my friends in the only haven some of them have ever known. Some of you may retain your hope for him and your patience in light of his narcissism. I however, have lost my patience and will tolerate it no longer. I consider it my duty to counter his message of hate wherever I find it. I urge you all to do the same.

You turn away from me sometimes in the night and cry silently into your pillow, not wanting to wake me. But I always wake when you weep like that, and I can see the outline of your slim ivory shoulders shaking with each stifled sob. Your dark hair cascading around you in a soft halo as some unspoken sadness carries you so far away from me, to places I can't follow. Once I would like to just cast aside the hesitation and enclose you in my arms as I do when we make love. But I know that I would be invading a private moment by doing so, would somehow hurt you more, even if I don't understand why. Is it some secret shame you carry within you that causes you so much pain? Something you think I would recoil from if I knew? I would not, I swear. I would kiss away your tears as I did that day I found you in the bathtub with a bottle of whiskey and handfuls of oxy. I pulled you up out of the cold water and you clutched me like a drowning person. I never told you that it was I who really was drowning before you found me and brought my dying heart back to life. It was that night that you baptized yourself in my bathtub which gave me the courage to really love again. I played Szerelem, Szerelem and you pulled me into the bed, just wanting me to hold you. It was you who were really holding me, though you didn't know it. And when we make love, your hands in my heart and myself moving within you, it is you who are pouring your strength into me. I know that we can't last like this though, with secrets and shadows between us. Whichever of us leaves first doesn't matter. Only that it was beautiful while it lasted.

Tonight
I took the last
vestiges of my
faltering morality
by the sweating hands
and led him
out back
to be
shot.