IMAGINE HAITI
The sky is blue.
The earth begins to shake,
you tremble and bounce
like brightly colored beads
in the braided hair of the girl walking
Before you can think,
your house has fallen down.
The girl has disappeared
in clouds of gray dust
you cannot breath
in the sudden dark, black like night,
your family is missing,
or trapped, or dying, or dead or gone,
your mother, your father your child.
There is no air
no food no water.
All the people
crawling over rubble.
The maggots crawl on rotting flesh,
Calling your name
your grandmother two floors below
don’t be afraid of death,
her whispers fade, to silence
a voice you do not understand,
claws the cracks with fingers
coming to get you.
Calling you.
Bon Dieu is calling you
until you can no longer hear,
until they bulldoze
you into a grave.
The earth trembles again.
Three colored beads shiver
on shattered cement.
The singing in the streets;
Praise to God and Haiti.
Singing in the streets!
Because that is all that is left,
how you will survive
this day.
Walk and sing and sing.
You sing until your throat is raw.
Until you can no longer speak.
Blood spills from your lips.
You sing and no one will hear
And still you sing.
They call it looting,
You have not eaten for two days
or maybe three. Four. Five. Six.
But you are used to that.
They shoot you in the street when you take
some water, a sack of rice.
You sleep in the street
and the earth shakes again.
And again. The earth will never.
Stop. Shaking.