Word Simple. Harold J. Recinos

Word Simple - Harold J. Recinos


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      for signs

      that read

      Lord of Mercy,

      tell these

      people

      full of

      hate, America,

      the beautiful,

      so beautiful

      too with me.

      The Place

      they read the English clocks made

      in China, always go to work on time,

      play the lottery for a big hit, never complain

      of a thing, walk the unknown streets, send their

      kids to schools offering books with a hundred pages

      missing, bury their dead in cheap wood with grief

      fixed to their wrinkled faces, breathe the angry air

      telling them how to misspell their names, live to

      see poverty abounding from generation to the

      next, know hunger, illness, fatigue, work that keeps

      them close to death, and listen to the devilish cries

      of hate that surrounds them in a forgotten place so

      carefully slighted by all your Gods. they lean into

      the light of day, stand in the quiet of night, kneel

      in prayer in sparsely furnished rooms, talk

      with ghostly listeners, and wait for an answer to

      their cries from a world unwilling to deliver even

      a hint of slanting light. when the children ask what

      dreams will come for them, what will you whisper

      into their beautiful innocent ears?

      Night

      every night she sat

      at the kitchen table

      eating bread, her old age

      telling me not to close

      the door, and listen to her

      closely for truth. she was

      like a book checked out of

      an old library before my eyes

      with a soul deeper than a

      city beggar’s cup. we sat

      quietly at the table listening

      to the wind howl outside the

      window, the radiator talking in

      the cold space like it was reading

      a Charles Dickens’ novel. then,

      in silence beyond help, the elderly

      woman told me she dreamed her

      teen son alive again in the apartment

      saying to her, “mother.” I remember

      that night so clearly, we looked at old

      photographs that adored hearing her

      speak, images frozen in time, with

      sounds of crying and laughter roaming

      in the old ladies heart. that night, I

      pleaded to God above let this woman

      know sweet love and everlasting

      peace.

      Old Revolutionaries

      there is a place for times like this

      where old revolutionaries thought

      gone still gather to talk about how

      they overcame persecuting days in

      another country. for decades they

      have roamed our city streets in the

      shadows quietly observing how the

      truth that helped make them more

      human is so carefully crushed now

      by an authoritarian flattery that has

      seduced the nation to a culture of

      threat with well-placed lies ready

      to violently pounce on the innocent

      without consequence. I sat on the

      stoop with these old rebels wondering

      out loud with them what it would mean

      to live unafraid from those you have

      called your own? last night with these

      old friends, I opened the Bible searching

      with a flashlight for a few lines to speak

      to our times only to find pages full of words

      that pulled back all the blinds and questioned

      the piety of this season of hate. these old

      insurrectionists who have lived for so long

      among those who want to do them in,

      still say in this haunted world a new

      day will come—so I will remain with them

      measuring each day with the intelligence that

      offers generous lasting change.

      The Walk

      let us walk beneath the

      half-moon sky in search

      of deserted streets, to the

      little park on the other side

      of Southern Boulevard, the

      grandmothers love to visit

      to mutter prayers and talk

      of everything. let us sit on

      a bench to watch the cross

      town bus makes it way down

      the block with passengers riding

      sideways wearing faces wrinkled

      by years of trouble, then throw

      bread at the unruly pigeons, and

      talk with Hank the wino who

      after a pint of Midnight Express

      recites lines written by the lonely

      men who live under the bridge.

      let us open our ill at ease eyes to

      see the things here that are hardly

      understood, the broken windows

      of tenements, the gutted cars on

      the streets, the children who play

      in shortened years, the furnished

      rooms with hearts stretched sad,

      the rubble of the empty lots, and

      congas pounding fatalistic beats

      at the Ortiz Funeral home. let us

      walk all night long until we find

      a drop of twisted light to dry our

      damp souls and to rattle us to the

      very bottom of our feet.

      The


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