visions of a promised land

the silent tears of the foreign-languaged

heated by the visitation of homing mem'ries

brew in a cauldron of screaming images

spilling o'er the edge like waves on a turbulent sea

their minds, a roiling lake sloshed about in reflections

churning dreams bombarded with sorrows.

they are invisible bodies wallpapered with greenbacks

that monied hands hang like carrots before their face.

affections rise for air in hopes drowning in need

when they think about their fam'lies, oppressed and baited.

visions of a promised-land seduced by a prostitute's voice

they chanced their bodies against the desert's death

thrilled to have arrived across the borders of fate

with homes awaiting the news of freedom's price.

sons and brothers, dad's of various stripe

bear the blows of their scourging

escaping toward a promised life.

Rachel wails still the song forlorn women wail

when the loves of their lives are ghosts haunting their dreams.

they who ne'er wrote, lay dead with sand in their eyes

while the captured are bound to the land of the their birth

handcuffed in jails, awaiting some sentence

no better saved than those who escaped near-free.

but God loves each howe'er their plight might end

for each is Jesus bent upon the pillar of their scourgings

receiving wounds bearing the carcasses on their backs.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Love...can easily become a device for avoiding unpleasantries and denying tragedy.  In the name of love we tend to deny "pity, joy, grief, and passion" and all for the sake of an egocentric "peace".

  -It is in...daily incidents when pity, joy, grief, and passion are denied that the soul is aborted.  Our neuroses are God-given signals to us of these denials.  Life will not be denied.  If we cannot or will not live it out creatively then life erupts in "a good drunk", a fit of meanness, or uncharacteristic behavior.  We often hear someone say, "I don't know what came over me."  What "comes over us" is those parts of us that are denied and unlived.  They need air.  Without it they smell, and the odor of those repressed and unlived parts of us eventually finds its way to the surface.

  -...our weaknesses are signs of life trying to get out.  Love without a strict regard for the truth of what lies under the surface of things is not love at all.  Souls are not made by lies, denials, or avoidances.