A not-so-Sunday, sunny afternoon

Why do they look so happy

and we Blacks ever angry?

Why do tears swell the heart

when trespassing the village?

Is it worth the risk of smiling?

Should rejection be accepted as a gift of life

sitting on the wrong side of town

yet fearing death if one departs?

Death gnaws where Life escapes

a hole boring deeper for the thirst that's Quench.

Suicide can seem the natural door to death

yet murder is quite commonplace.

What a demanding state wherein the prophet speaks

vomiting the Word that few will eat.

The affair of living is a dance with demons

who always seem content at the other's ball.

Yet Dancing is the joy of Day

even when the demons sway.

While dancing we discover Who our partner is

steadily we are led, His arm about our back.

*Thoughts of Richard Rodriguez:

  -I want people to be confused.  I remember as a young reader I was always patient with books in a way that I don't think young readers are any more.  I am looking for the reader who is patient with books, who is willing to find insight through puzzlement.  I don't want to save the reader from that extraordinary freedom to be puzzled.

 -We are moving far away from our Puritan ancestors in some way in our spirit of play, and yet in our determination for the individual to become what she will, we are very Puritan.  It seems to me that the freedom to be ourselves is very Puritan indeed.