Aye, smile is the greatest /but what can
be achieve in it? the rust in my tears
translated in pain & i write
the other phase of my life
in truth / against the center
of what holds my other lives together
& see these dark shadows join hands to expose ribbed bones__
i think it's five to ten or hundreds
years in poverty _exiled hunger
in tears filled belly__when i count
the tears in my eyes in odd 1,3,5,7....
i think it reaches a billion tears/ bringing the desert to tears in me
see this as horror / last week
i lost one of my lives__& i don't think
we are dying of poverty / of course not &
this is not a poem to please you__
but to feel starved like me/ like those lives before my arrival
the attitude of life being
squeeze from the nature of
the waterless eyes__tearless water__where our hopes live like a homeless beggar__a path of hopelessness en route on my veins
these days poverty does not kill us
we're immune to it__it's the hope of glancing at food that kill/ poverty__is just a name to me/ germinating from
father to children / children to grandchildren__in & out__on we go
we sing the anthem