Hymn of Shame
There is nothing here that you haven’t seen before:
The eyes of children garnished with hunger,
Firmer hands lounging later on their carcasses,
Middlemen shaking hands with vultures inside their rampart,
An army of slaves led by a blind few—
Your retina must be worn thin by now.
When speech abides by the table and guns sing in the field,
Do we lay still on our turgid belly or hum the hymn of shame?
There is nothing your ears haven’t heard before:
Lies that buzz on free food,
The anarchy of worms,
An old woman singing fables.
The coast won’t clear by noon.
Iba’Dan
Rusty rooftops sit helplessly on the old, restless earth,
As hopelessness refuses to exit the dour.
At noon, flies fight the midden,
An army trolls for fruits in aging marketplaces.
When dusk agonizingly beckons to its trench,
Sagging faces wait in their crevices.
Strangers are quickly forgotten,
This page of ubiquity, sprawled in a glory bowl,
Permitting time to hop on it.
