Crisp morning dew blankets the ground

While smokey fog lingers on mountain tops.

The sweet smell of fresh-cut hay arouses hunger,

And the buzzing, chirping, and thumping awake all from slumber.

Old ladies in sun hats tend to gardens, fending off birds from the blueberry bushes.

Cows jump into unripened apple trees, and I mosey along–

Coffee in hand– reveling in Appalachia:

Tommy Toes, slap-footing, mountain music, hollows, farmers’ markets, summer’s harvest, waterfalls and rivers.

You ripen like a Cherokee Purple with such stimulation.

We are here.

We are together.

We are human.

We are intelligent.

We are beautiful.

We are fun.

We are happy.

We are rich.

We are students.

We are small.

We are blue.

We are black.

Somos amigos.

We are the masses.

We scrutinize– each other.

We look.

We dare.

We talk — a lot.

We walk.

We ride.

We drive.

We eat.

We preach.

We love.

We love.

We are the masses–

Or so we thought.

There’s this erroneous conclusion.

Since I’ve soiled and masked my mien,

Your epithet has become fiend.

Here’s what my guise hides:

Soy los alimentos y los raices of a premature seed

Yearning to be kindled by a sunbeam.

But, the Oleander chants in a lethal voice

That forbids me to do more than own a paramour. I

t tells me a history.

You’ve heard it too.

Women are in the missionary position of society.

 I slit the throat of that idea with my style and stamen

I reap vengeance on that idea by imbibing that fear;

And yet, the rain has struck me.

Sloshing away are the dirtied advices that sprouted from the petals of my mother,

Dear Oleander.

Pierces the dark on a frozen hilltop,

Silhouetting the deformed beings,

Inexplicit and black,

Disguising their bitter curves,

Their spiny, serrated edges

Chipping in the mouth of the illuminated ether.

They seek rebirth.

What happened?

Change, it has, we’ll agree,

Soaked into all my threads,

Threads that twist and tear,

Reorganize,

Reattach,

Leaving uncertainty where certainty was taken for granted—

Like the curling lips of a stranger—

Leaving images where words, “spiny or smooth,”

Painted stories and sounded “noise and bramble, thorn and din.”

But the change,

The change is making me tell not show, not show,

how show, show this.