some sadness passes

well, it is what it is, what it was.
i have traveled many roads,
through endless countries with or without borders,
through treeless forests and tired mountains,
airports full of passengers without direction.
i have moved ceaselessly,
always trying on new hats, washing and rewashing
the linens of my life, searching, perhaps
finding some semblance of home, of peace.

from sadness to sadness i have gone, finding
bones of death and the flowers of dark despair,
learning of children's ribcages and empty bellies,
gathering tears, harvesting salt and tears and
wave after wave of tears: the falling rain of the dead,
the dying and the living dead: those victims
of freedom that my country seeks to kill
and kill again, to eat but not consume.

i have seen this, i have seen the forlorn lover
whose fist strikes a blind wall and whose bones
break like an endless ocean with its furious duty
of shattered shores. i have seen  the damage done
by simple misunderstanding, by not understanding
what love is.

the sadness of this world flies like an invasive wind,
fully encompassing us, feeding us strange fruit,
feeding upon us, inventing new words for itself,
for fear, for despair, for silence, and for spring.

i reject it all, i sing the names of the dead,
those i know and those i never knew,
could never know. i remember for what reason
love brings its vengeful sword down
upon the oppressed, inventing new words for hope.