“The Scars of Salvation””
Let the halos of my heart fall from my brow,
A light I thought I’d find while resting on the shoulder of the word,
The one that hums a tune through the folds of this poem.
Illuminate for others my journey, this bitter taste of a homeland’s pain,
The anguish that fills it, stirring with every dawn
That rises on a morning full of nonsense.
The word was powerless then,
Unable to forge a new space for confession,
Or pluck a bejeweled pearl from its sky
To gift to the poor, the orphans, the forgotten,
Those on the brink of death.
I know I am the zero from which all poets begin,
The seed whose sprout only grew in the shadow of my ancestors’ verses.
From them, I drew the strength to survive,
Dreaming of their blissful, generous seas.
I lean on them all with a pride that lifts me
Into realms bright with the light of their wisdom, O Lady Poem.
All I ever wanted from you was salvation,
To end on your shores.
I began you (or you began me) among the transients
In a city whose streets had all gone dark,
Forgotten by l ong wars, then awakened just once
By the triumph of survivors, and drops of hope
That thirst couldn’t defeat.
Between tables of gunpowder and napalm,
Scattered limbs and blood-stained walls,
Jackets lie vomiting on the sides of ruins,
With the words “I was here” scrawled upon them.
A hemorrhage of questions.
How I’ve longed for my poems to take them on,
A path to grief and to release.
I craft my shoot for the fated crowd,
And belong to the march coming from those forgotten lands
Hidden in the folds of shackles and prison cells,
The torment of hungry stomachs,
The gasping of tongues behind cries for departure,
The absence of hope for a coming brilliance
That carries on its face the radiance of the impossible.
Lady Poem, I know glory in your proof.
I know the secret in your river.
This is how we meet, and with us, we meet
A life that has no shrine,
A life that only survived through an impossible bargain
Between a bundle of thorns that grew just once
From the pain of salvation.
I am destined to live and to see the city
Be the first to bless the burning heat of a step toward freedom,
Swearing by the fading glory in its children’s eyes,
The honeyed treasures flowing over a new homeland.
