Reverence

Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
~Philip Levine

Instructions from the wind
creep in beneath the door
of the house built on a hill,
whispering ‘thou shalt tremble
like cornered rats.’
Winter wants the dead
and the young at its feet.
Even those with gold
in the fabric of their epaulettes
who think they deserve better,
it wants to push them over
the edge of the universe.

Everywhere the eye looked

1. Everywhere the eye looked
It saw lime-green grass
Over the escarpment, land
Awaiting plough and gait of cattle,
A land of slope and clarity,
And men dying to till it!

2. Through tool and implement
We seek an electricity
Of hammer over anvil,
And it will make us sweat too
For work is key to hope,
And we are its only gate.

Rethabile: This is part of a poem I'm working on

Abduction

for bui thi kim thanh

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of biên hòa.

that same day
it rained: the god of rain
got very drunk.

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
past the dông nai valley
filled with war junk,
out where rain nicks
bark and bast away.

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of biên hòa
that same day.