Monday, June 18, 2018

Names Of My Children

Names Of My Children
© Surazeus
2018 06 18

Invisible but for the name I wear,
I walk rainbow bridge between dreaming brains,
hoping to taste sorrow and joy that flow
from hearts cracked by staff of Moses at dawn.

Alone on mountain of the burning bush,
I know nothing but the wind and the rain
which fill my empty body with wild swirls
of voices proclaiming the way of justice.

For six thousand years we walk the waste land,
singing hymns to manna that sprouts from mist,
but when we arrive at Pyramid Town
our crying children are taken away.

Outside the shining gate of paradise
I crouch in dust and clutch three apple seeds
to write names of my children in blank sand
whom wind erases from my memory.

Faceless at the Wailing Wall of Lost Souls,
I recite the true name of every child
taken away from the breasts of their parents
and assigned new names they could not pronounce.

Though their faces are blank, I see them all
like grapes on the vine of ancestral soul,
faces of my parents who disappeared
for I hear their voices in muffled wind.

How far across the world we wandered lost,
scattered from the valleys where our tribes thrived,
taken from villages to live in cities
where we managed empires of market towns.

How many boys were taken from their clans
by generals of kings to build mighty armies
who stormed across vast lands like locust swarms
to assimilate nations in vast empires.

Though I was taken from my family farm
and trained on pyramid to name the stars
and measure process of transforming time
I still remember bright eyes of my mother.

On every river shore around the world
I write the names of my children in mud
and plant apple seeds in their aching hearts
so trees of paradise sprout from their words.

The faces of lost children I arrange
on walls in temple of the Faceless God
gaze down at us from shadows of the song
that preserves the names and deeds of no one.

I wander through labyrinth of faceless doors,
searching for children taken from my arms
but every child I see looks like my child,
so I claim them all as I walk alone.

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