haiti poem

We see our faces splashed with ashes

As if this were ritual… wait for it

Tormented by tortured tendons turn from it

Tell me – have you ever seen such horror

I’m haunted not by ghosts or incarnations but

By images of infants sitting in front of mothers

Staring at starry skies with lifeless eyes

He just wants her to move… it

Possesses me – psychosomatic or not

I can’t stop this sweat from streaming from my sinus

Grown men don’t cry no….

We battle back tears swallow lumps in our throats

Voices cracked into asymmetric sentences

Seeing teens scrabble through flatbeds

Batting back maggots disguising their parents

And the air is thick in error as

Military loads M-16s instead of medical kits

My melon splits when doctor’s assistance prevented

By hand of THIS government silhouetted by

My inability to do shit but sit

Texting yele and red cross ain’t enough

What do you tell the mother

Whose son’s still trapped under rubble

Yeah – I gave 10 dollars to help you

Help who?

Specifically precisely exactly in what way

Do I say be patient to the dialysis patient?

Tell him the marines are coming

They’ll be here any day down just pray now

He don’t talk back no more what do I say now

What do I mutter to bodies in mass graves laid down

Give Emergency Relief to Haiti Aid..Now?

Wait…now….wait….now….