our skins are
burning feathers,
squeeze to the heat of our suffering.
unpricked.
we scratch until we see the tears of our hide.

our thrones are
refuse
thrown into a cart,
set on the road
to the bottomless pit of oblivion!

We are
spotless leopards
oriented to the
cringing crack of the crash of the cane
of torture
which viciously cajoles our obtuse fingers
to till and till until the roots
of our dislodgement
navigate the veins of native soil like the salt-sailing ark of wood
that settles only on the mount of sorrow.

Our people are
fetuses ripped out of the womb of the black rose,
canned in the vessel of rotting wood
which equates our princes and their aides,
bringing forth only slaves - no masters.
our precious pearls sink into the horizon.

our sheaves we grieve!
our barns abandoned!
our families famished!
fatherland,
motherland,
is this your other hand
or another land?