where poppies grow

where poppies grow

There’s a girl who begins having visions. One day, she stares at a gray cloud hanging above nearby houses like a dreary sigh. Her forehead aches and she’s growing in a-weariness about the state of the world. The environment is suffering, beings are dying, and living is starting to look different.

Where is the color going? Why is it hard to breathe? Should the water taste like blood?

No one seems to notice. The people move about normally, but there’s a heavy smoke in the sky and the sunlight kind of stings. She starts to stay something, and people look at her weird. Until she realizes the sounds leaving her lips are trills and clicks that mimic the vibrations of an ancient universe most have yet to see. They move around her in cycles returning to the polluted waters of high rises and food lines that rock them to sleep in shallow beds of distraction.

The people are wilting. What pride once made strong, makes greed, makes beaten bodies, and brown bodies, and beaten brown bodies selling roses on the side of the highway to save es familia Flores the thorns of foreign powers and familiar aches.

The cold is no longer crisp. It slithers into her coat like the hands of cops on blackened bodies sights searching for a soul to drive a hole into, letting a draft meant for dem strong black boys that face corners and dream of backboards or beats to vent on.

The girl dreams of grandmas’ hands warm and thick like those good quilts kept in the closet with the rest of the heavy things that blanket nights thoughts. Well-fed with the fullness of what bosom provided, she’s guided by the lines of worked palms that bare the wisdom of folk songs.

Trees are turning into paper cranes made by children wishing for a meal that comes with a toy. Or a father. Or a mother. Or a love that they can carry on they back like school supplies from the city double dutchin’ and dappin’ to the rhythm of pencils with broken leads tappin’ on the tables they cards was dealt on.

Seeds grow slower, and the reap sows faster. The soil that bore civilization dries under the heat of plastic bottles stuffed with political agendas showing polarized maps to two different deaths.

Iced caps melts on the warmth of bodies fresh leftover from investing wars. The eternal spirit of the home has been evicted making pastors homeless, yes, the gold on they finger is just glitter, it just glitters while coal burns the feet of prophets sent to deliver temperance

The girl watches the drowning.

Did the flood end on the sixth day or the day the sun enlightened Noah seeking land on Crow’s wings? How does she part a boiling sea on a philosophy that doesn’t sale without bringing people to outlets that discount they freedom?

Scented fogs provide solace on summers that end too quickly, and winters coming leaving mothers empty handed raising spring for new seasons. Their skirts soften the creak of tanks making curtains against blue and red lights that stalk houses and take hearts hostage. Coloring pages taped to cement walls create mirage of a fading outside the edges are left white cause what’s a profit without a margin.

A sickness is spreading. Seizing bodies create shadows dancing on the late stages of midnight television. Lungs collapse like mine shafts trapping life away darkness reclaiming hardened clay molded from artistry of ashened hearths that began to move to Life’s song.

Her foundations are shaken hands held out in negotiation for private vacations on islands whose sands of time keep hidden caskets of consecrated gospels and blessed cultures now cropped on foreign plantations patronized in the face of hunger.

Even dogs don’t bark no more. They huff and scratch the back of clipped ears fleeing from chained backyards into softer leashes that don’t choke as hard when they pull against the limits of feigned freedom.

And fiend ignorance strokes the city into sedation depression make potholes of robbed pleasure jammed with tossed dreams that constrict highways like arteries transporting loose trash and weary souls to front steps where love resided. Exhaust fumes pour from the mouth of babes, exhausting mommas on exhausted days of exhausted hustles and chest pains.

Snakes spit spilt oil which leak from dumpsters that carry good food and fires that warm the untethered. Lips tunnel smoke into the night warming chimneys against impassioned winds alight with wonder for such a humble pyre.

The breeze floats fragmented reality into her eyes the force of a hundred lashes blink bittersweet rain on bent backs that bring offerings to cotton fields where poppies grow, their petals round like ripe peaches that can’t be eaten now the Garden is infested with greed and pesticide.

The people starve. Hooded raptors watch enraptured with hunched shoulders as prey whisper hymns of salvation in haunted tones, pleading for promises of release that hardly ruffle the peacocked feathers of those death angels who hover, their bowed heads proselytizing repercussions of impure waters

Sacrifices must be made. Capital vices and empty plates solidify as they kill forming abstract volcanoes. The girl climbs inclined to escape suffering the atmosphere is just as heavy sloth draping her shoulders like a weighted shift, a solemn canopy. What insolence that birds soar so beautifully she silently envies them and stumbles. They feather away dark clouds of wrath supporting her to continue on sensible legs esteemed by their confidence she loves them for flying and follows

Allied she advances against hailing comets of forgotten languages and false envoys approaching acceptance that shakes the furnace of its affliction for vengeance, pelting black rain on shallow lovers sheltered in pompous graves of possession where they mummify in prideful lust. The girl trips skinning knees on delayed reactions sharpened by apathy and crawls, halting at Helen’s center. The shaking structure is frenzied by little deaths, mouth open in a becoming ecstasy from spoken seductions.

From this height the girl can see how infinite she is surrounded by the grandeur of suffering. The edge cracks under the pressure of her plate she descends grasping on charmed cliffs that cut her psalms forcing the letting go of false profits falling falling falling into scorching mud that marinates the bodies of toy soldiers in neighboring yards. Sinking is easy and she hopes her bones gravitate prosperity for posterity’s sake until only her crown remains; her beginning is her end.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe I can’t –

Surrendering, she is filled with liquid of the earth and Death rocks her into stillness. Time passes and rivers wind her lungs paying tribute to Life’s flow for what is breath besides receiving and letting go? The natural law of the universe remains absolute impermanence, soul cannot be destroyed only transformed. Body becomes nature and nurture is one with creation and so she is resurrected by beating drums.

Her celestial body casts shadows that emulate a gratifying silhouette cutting shining eyes, like brown diamonds once hardened from conflict now spilling peace on young blood. Lips are hills with rounded peaks that speak of summits staircasing to heaven. A lion wraps her body challenging approach, truth is inside her glass house leaving little to see beyond the stars that dot the universe of her face, distracting from the red rift of her sea where pain once cleaved now spawning new basins of ocean where three jewels take refuge.

Ancestral blessings accentuate shoulders like seated tables, carved by a sloping back that leads black girls home their tracks seeded with willow trees curling roots reaching for nurturing foundations and cleansing waters. She crosses fields on legs of ethos carrying with corded arms those who couldn’t fly, pathos tucked close to where her humor is, a joyous body enriched with reparations. Webs of green ivy spider the expanse of her intelligent design insulating broken homes and flourishing fresh green where children worked bricks for logos.

Momentarily sons don’t speak caught in the rapture of their Mother’s rebirth. Daughters deliver divinity to downtrodden masses making sails for ships returning stolen treasures. Splendid in her ascension, no long reigns the question is she beautiful or beloved?