Paradoxes of Faith

3.23.06

And she walks on…
To preserve the three boys walking beside her
She’s forced to let the child on her back go hungry,
Losing the fruit of her body for the sin of her soul…
Or was it for her skin color?
Deep black screaming out against a desert landscape
Almost as loud as her cries for help
Simultaneously marking the conception of the bastard child,
A product of rape – half black, half Arab
Alone, despised by both warring factions
For ‘the Other’s’ blood in her young veins
Perhaps it’s better that the baby perish -
God will care for her soon.
That is, if God could see their plight now.
Where is He, where has He been?
Where was He while her three sons watched
Their mother violated in her own household?
The defilement left her both unclean
And, most likely, unable to bear children again -
But she’ll never have access to a doctor to ever know that reality.
So, what was He thinking, what was He even feeling
As her young sons were rewarded with rifle butts to their foreheads
For their offering of fists to the backs of the men penetrating their mother?
One….two…
Blackness….like her skin color….
three….light….screams….
Four….crimson…..
Tears….and collapse….
And where is He now as she worries about that
African Cancer she may have contracted
Adding insult to injury as she moves methodically
Toward somebody else’s country,
Somebody else’s home she’s trespassing though,
Praying the sin she’s committing now will be forgiven
Unlike the judgments leveled against her by the trespassers of her own land.
But worrying is a luxury of those wealthy enough to afford time to spare,
An indulgence she lacks here almost as much as those of hope and water,
Synonyms in this wasteland
Realities in abundance elsewhere.
Anywhere else.
Hope fades as fast as her shadow as the sun rises overhead
And she begins to trample her own form under her own feet.
Ironic how the drama plays out.
Fleeing for her life, and yet she still can’t avoid being stepped upon.
Somewhere in a distant land a pristine piece of
Indian-sewn cloth waves on a thin metal barrel
Bearing the inscription ‘Don’t Tread On Me,’
While here tarnished Russian-made metal barrels spew fire at those who
Dare enough to fight for the hope of having their own flag, those who
Choose to tread on their own fleeing shadows in an effort to find freedom
And that fleeting four syllable word,
Autonomy.
Meanwhile an air-conditioned jet from the land of the pristine waving cloth
Features men in dry-cleaned suits fighting with words for the last laugh
While she whispers silent prayers
That her next baby will experience a first breath.
And perhaps if it isn’t too much
That silver bullet containing the bickering men decorated with
Self-adorned nooses around their white necks
Emblazoned with the colors of their beloved country
That once found itself fighting oppression for its own liberation
Might actually alter its compass, both moral and physical
And its human cargo will walk outside into heat nearly as oppressive as the
Economic restrictions legislated against her from within the cool metal bird.
And she will finish spreading the last handful of burning sand
Onto the grave of her youngest child
Transported from her womb to her back,
And from her back into the arms of death that
Rocked her slowly Into the transient terrain of the Sahara.
And looking up into the white man’s blue eyes, tears in her own
In her beautiful indigenous tongue she’ll say,
‘Welcome to Darfur, Mr. President.’