Deep South Sudan

 

Amazing…the kid is smiling and laughing again.  He’s reaching out his hand to touch my hand.  He’s slapping my forearm with giddy force or giving me low-fives twenty times per minute or just staring at me like I’m the most wonderful thing in the world…

                                                                        – June 13^th 2009

 

 

a promise for joseph opoka

 

you knew when his sister walked into

   the waiting room

in february you knew right away

  he was dead

and he’d been dead

                             for a while

 

a delay in the system

 

learning now of the passing

                                     of joseph

it happened when you were

                                    still away

he kicked the nurses with his stick legs

bared his teeth and bit their hands

and they couldn’t draw blood

but why didn’t they sedate him?

take his blood when he was half

conscious?  test it and start him

on something?  or in the absence

                                             of blood

why couldn’t they treat him

based on his history?

such questions don’t even rise

to the tongue they slide beneath

the heart like unsent letters

pushed back into place

 

when you’re asking them

                                                 in sudan

 

he died without anyone

he loved by his side and you see it

                                                so clearly

his wasted body his skeletal grimace

and you don’t know what to say

to God about all of this

 

you remember curtains of night

falling fast last year and finding him

in convulsions in the lightless

ward and finding him no nurse no

drug to stop his shaking

 

you took your girls home then ran

into town and your kids thought you

were crazy to be running like this

you searched the pharmacies lit

                                           by candles

 

  in nothing but

a metal shed beside a creek

of rubbish you got your hands

on the injection you wanted

then rode a motorcycle back

with the vials clinking in your pocket

a patter a promise against your chest

but when you came rushing in you saw

his figure sketched across the forest

green mattress placed upon the quiet

cement floor you saw his fever

tremors had ceased

 

if you weren’t so far away

the second time

he checked into that

place you would’ve run

for him you would’ve run

until your legs

                                                 gave out

 

and then you would’ve crawled

 

or so

 

  you tell yourself

when you got to him

you would’ve let him

bite your hands

into tattered nameless

                              things

if he wanted to

and kick your face

into black into bloodless

   if that’s what he felt

like doing  

 

until clamor until crimson

all this crimson breathplucking

                                  clamor until

  memory until fury all this

fury spun heavenward

                            into memory

and the two of you

                  were found

                         

laughing

        and laughing

 

like young brothers high up

in the currents the repetitions

of a cassia’s body

deciphering tiny yellow flowers

   from yearning

 

tweezing them out and then

 

the blood of petals on fingertips

 

the two of you so

                   carelessly

dropping blossoms

   luminous abstracts           fleeting

motifs in the distance between

your letting go and the skin

      the shock of touching

 the skin of eternity

                         even down

here in calluses in split open

                             nails in heaving

breaths of earth