Bring me your tired
Bring me your hungry and your poor
So we came
Huddled our families into commercial jet-planes
Skipped our rocks across oceans
Picked them up on western shores
Stacked them into homes
Built the ceilings as high as our credit scores
Became nurses
Became doctors and engineers
real-estate brokers and devout Catholics
And we never looked back
Liberty's beacon of hope shining so bright before us
We anchored ourselves at her feet
Called ourselves citizen and
Left nothing behind but
The stretching shadow of our past
Tugging at our heels with their empty stomachs
The typhoons coursing through their veins
The mudslides swiped on their cheeks
The rattling of aluminum rooftops pounding beside their heartbeat
The American Dream
Doesn't allow us to think of such things
The anthem we used to sing
Becoming so easy to forget
The Philippine soil beneath our nails
Being wiped clean by
Health benefits and credit card debt
Quick to write checks to pay off our guilt
Learn to swallow perfect English until
Every hint of our accent is washed from our throat
Create a language barrier so tall
The pleading voices on the other side
Is a dialect we don't recognize as our own, but
Who can ignore the hunger?
Who can ignore the rumbling of stomachs that echo from home?
The weight of their bellies heavy from swallowing stones
They search for Jesus in our eyes that we may
Turn those stones to bread
...but we chose to remain silent instead.
As if the floodwaters could never reach our doors
As if we can't imagine having to be the father
Protecting his family from the storm
Praying that the roof isn't as frail as his spirit
Try pretending not to hear it
When a twelve-year-old girl holds her screams when
The shame
Rips through her womb as
Destructive as the tourist that paid her
Imagine her mother
Having to wash that bloody skirt in the river
Her tears falling into the current
Brought over to our beaches with the morning tide
Have you never stopped to question why
The ocean always taste salty?
Have you never wondered
How many bodies could be found at the bottom of canals?
Taste it:
The way malnutrition settles on the mouth like unheard prayers
The way dehydration makes it impossible to shed tears to show how much they hurt
Because while we
Button up our shirts and
Straighten our crooked ties
We can’t hear them pounding our doors from the other side saying
Be careful whom you impress
Because the most sure-fire way to oppress a people
Is to convince them to imitate and adopt
The cultures and values of those who oppress, so
Can you see them when you dress?
Can you hear their silence as loud as your conscience?
Muffled by the mountains of garbage
Lost beneath a parent's broken smile
It still speaks to the heart inside us
How it’s stitched together by the loose strings of our flag
Held by the frail fingers we’ve left behind
They tug
Hoping to pull us back home
They wait
Sitting on the steps of rice terraces
Writing our names in the soil to bring us closer to our roots
We have to return
Bring back everything we've learned
Carry them like rocks on our backs and
Stack the stones
Until the hunger doesn't rumble
Until the tables are set
Until the children's laughter rises into
Anthems we will no longer forget
Stack the stones
Rebuild a nation to stand on its own
Show the world our people have backbones
Tell Lady Liberty
We no longer need to bring you
Our tired, our hungry and our poor
We can take care of that from
Home
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SOUTHERN COMFORT
Hours of open road. Living out of a suitcase and jumping hotels. Fast food consumption. Outdated GPS system. Truck stops and rest areas.
I've been touring poetry for a little over three years now and this is the life I lead when the colleges come calling with gigs. Funny part is, I haven't gotten tired of it yet. I love being out on the road- meeting new people and having somewhat of a rockstar status (without the salary, the hot girls, the groupies, the private jets, the sold out stadiums). Crap...maybe I'm not a rockstar after all.
I don't know why I enjoy it so much...I always end up missing my wife when I'm gone, I know I'll have a ton of crap to do when I get home, the hotels aren't always as nice and I get tired- really tired. But maybe it's the chance to do what I love for a living. Or maybe it's like some sort of vacation from the everyday grind and a chance to escape for a bit. Maybe it's the people I meet along the way and the new places I get to visit.
This time I took my brother-in-law and guitarist, Jollan. We had a blast. It was a good bonding experience for brothers-in-law to get to know each other better...like the fact that despite my warning him to stop taking so many pictures because we look like tourists in unfamiliar territory thus increasing our chances of getting mugged, he's not going to listen anyway. It's good he did though- because at least now we have more pictures to look back on. Maybe I'm just a wimp.
(Does a bathroom need double doors? Is that to make a grand entrance to the toilet?)
The tour started out with our 8 hour drive from our home in Ft. Lauderdale up to Savannah, Ga. We decided to make a stop in Jacksonville and hit up Mo's spot at SoHo. It was amazing...intimate crowd that made the noise the size of a stadium. Anyone ever wanting to stop in Jax should hit him up to get on the stage. Jax people really know how to appreciate poetry. Even better was I was able to snag a 4 star hotel in Jax through HotWire for $70!! That's pretty rockstar I guess.
(Thanks for having us Mo!)
Our next show was the following evening at Armstrong Atlantic South Univ. (thanks to David Warren and the rest of CUB for bringing us out!). To make the show even more spectacular, we were graced with the presence of Slam Charlotte who drove down from, well, Charlotte to be a part of the show (Carlos, Bluz and Q...we're taking over the world, ya'll). Together along with some students, we put on a bangin' show.
(That's pretty rockstar!)
(That's Carlos and Bluz from Slam Charlotte- they're special)
(That's the CUB crew...they're MORE special)
(That's David Warren...the one who brought us out...he's, like, the most specialest)
(Is that a rockstar moment??)
Next day we drove to Atlanta where I was able to snag another 4 star hotel through HotWire for $80 (I love pretending we got $! That is, until we find out there are no vending machines at 4 star hotels and you have to buy your Coke at the gift shop for $3!!)
(This is us trying to make "artistic" photographs with a non-artistic camera)
We had a day off from shows so we went around Little 5 Points and shopped for vintage clothes and Jollan bought a flannel for $12...I had to tell him it's not vintage if it came from Old Navy. Afterwards, we just HAD to go to Gladys' and Ron's Chicken N' Waffles. I've heard tons of stuff about the place and had to go. Any of you who have never had chicken n' waffles, you have to do it at least once in your life. It's AMAZING.
(Welcome to Atlanta...)
(Little 5 Points has GREAT thrift stores)
(You don't go to Atlanta and not eat here...you just don't)
Wednesday, our last day, we drove down to Barnesville for a 2 pm show at Gordon College (thanks to Sharon Lloyd for bringing us back!) I was apprehensive at first- I always am about noon shows because you never know who will show up or if you'll be stuck performing at the college cafeteria but it turned out great! We had an amazing turnout and it was done in their little coffee shop. Everyone was so attentive. I should also add that my old friend Acelyn drove down from Atlanta to watch the show.
(Thanks Gordon College for bringing us)
When the show was done, it was time to head home- a long long long drive home. 10 hours to be exact. All in all, it was amazing and I can't wait to do it again next month. Tennessee, West Virginia and North Carolina- here we come!
Oh yeah, we took some on-the-open-road pics too...
TYPHOON KETSANA
Pictures from Typhoon Ketsana in the Philippines. They say Manila got twice the rainfall as Katrina- that in one day, they received twice the amount of rainfall they would normally receive in two months...
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