putting one foot in front of the other

the advice, like an ice-pack on
a black-eye;
cold and blunt
and drowning in the inability to
bandage tragedies.

in the silence of shuffling our feet forward,
I wonder when it might end,
where we’ll stop to rest and
no longer have to just
put one foot in front of the other
with
the incessant
need to travel, to leave one another behind
and our beloved things,
so our feet can catch up
with our restless hearts

hearts like fish out of water,
struggling briefly for breath, stubborn for a while
but succumbing to the dry air,
numbing our heartbeats into a slow whirring
that, instead of keeping us alive,
mechanizes us, reduces us to
measured movements and muted consciences.

and perhaps if we could now see into our chests
we’d only find the likeness of dried-out sugar cane,
needing tough hands
and immaculate juicing
to let out any sweetness.

but we must put one foot in front of the other,
a nurturing philosophy
that does well to produce mounds of sugar-caned cowards
frightened at facing the reality of immobility

our legs wistfully walk away
under the guise of “moving on,”
convincing ourselves
that those we leave behind also know they just have to
put one foot in front of the other.

traveling conditions

we are stepping in plots of sand
that thicken under the sweet
barrage of rain

the kind of sky wetness
transit riders dislike,
watching their missed buses and trains
leaving them behind under
dreary shelters, clouded skies

and despite the rain we are deserted nomads
shifting in the wind,
our bodies sedentary but
souls traveling above our limbs,
(cumulonimbus middle names
but sun-dried tendons made raisins
with time, and day)

the parades have ended
closed by the sky’s refusal to stop
while parched humans struggle for
any sweet wetness to touch their lips

and we are just that –humans,
under the same one roof of air and water and clay
making footsteps in dirt roads
or muddy pathways, in
rain coats and sandy turbans

breathing the thick air of being,
the weight, like boulders of drought and flood
upon our chests,
slowly pressing us further into the ground.