Poetry

I come to look at you at night
to see if you're still
curled on your cot.

Thousands of years,
I witnessed
the butchering of men
called history.

I can't help anyone.

I rise,
stir the howls in wolfs,
and swell the tides,

but I can't pull you out
from your brother's
murderous arms.

I can only hold
your hope
coins

in a tin cup
in the sky.

All you need
is a stumble

even you earn
a boot
in the ribs.

And you pick me up,
hide me
under your tongue,
and carry me inside.

I'm your phone,
your postcard,
your smoke signal,

the only one who can talk
through ceilings and walls

and send a coded message
to the man released today:

Ring the bell
to my mother's house

and tell her
I'm alive.