Leo Briones (6-16-63 / El Paso, TX)

On this eve of eruptions and windmills,
we have been gathered, as you will,
the prophets of the unknown
in storehouses and oil-caked alleys.
The blood of cows and lambs fill our empty bellies,
dirty syringes coated in high balls and heroin
are symbols of our American heartbreak.

After all,
were we not promised more than this⎯
land ruled by Wall Street gentry
and huck-and-shuck K Streeters
who fix their ties and pull their collars
as Nero fiddles and Tea Partiers sip?

Sing homage to the era of change.

Hope grows on narrow highways and wide-open sky.
The people march to the mall.
They're welcomed by Lincoln shining in his temple,
cry out that he slay the moneychangers
and the bill chasers from the foundation of this new earth—
to once again free the slaves before lilacs bloom in the fields.

All that is left for me to say⎯
sing loud brother, sing loud sister
hold my hand, write my poem, say my truth,
smear my lies, love what I love, prophecy what I prophecy

hold in your hand the alabaster shell of ages,
smash it to raw pulp, mixed with sweat and blood
of that which has past and which will unfold
from the womb of uncertain suffering to something
like grace of life, gentle monarchs of the breeze;
orange and black, in perfect flight.