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 streaming images

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

thire minds, a roiling lake sloshed about in reflections

churning dreams bombarded with sorrow.

they are invisible bodies wall-papered with greenbacks

that monied hands hang before their face like carrots.

affections rise for air in hopes drowning in need

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

visions of a promised-land seduces like a prostitute's voice

as they chanced their bodies against the desert's death.

thrilled to have arrived across the borders of fate

their homes await news of freedom's price.

sons and brothers, dads of various stripe

bear the blows of their scrourging

escaping toward a promised land.

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 their birth

handcuffed in jails, awaiting 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 scourging

receiving wounds to bear the carcasses on their backs.

*The only face I see of God is the face of another human being.

*The statue of limitations expires on all childhood traumas.  We have to get over it, fix our lives and move on.

-Quincy Jones

*A work of art has no existence or function apart from its effect on human observers.

-Marshall McLuhan