Wtinessing, One More Time

We extend the hours until the daylight
is over in this here and in this now.

We cannot believe in thereness.

The present is all we know
and this struggle whose name
we cannot even spell much less
write on walls for everyone to see
commit to memory
so that with the blood
of martyrs on streets that we remember
we will not forget what is forever
even as we start what revolution is
that which opens to us
the new morning we have yet to own.

We partake of what meal there is
by Nimitz towards the silent sea.
Our meager currency can buy
us some laughter for each other
even as we hope for some tricks
from life as from friends
when we imagine some good food
could be made available for free
those greens touched by our people
who know the mystery of land
and patience and struggle.

It is this same energy
we plumb from the depths
of this history, from the abyss
of what we do not know,
not yet. We take to talking longer
believing that the shame we feel
for being the middle class that we are
is the same shame we can live by.

But there is no escaping this
knowing that we have come to:
it gets into our dreams
day-in, day-out, and in our nightmares
there, there are our people,
young and old, broken and incomplete,
bent and strong but without love
waiting for what could there be
from this emptiness that we are.

The night, getting deeper into the dark,
keeps us company and we feel
the hours tensed by what we cannot do.
We go back on the road
to journey with the early hours
that come into the new day.

Hon, HI