The Promised Land

by Anna Ruiz

It’s a gift and a curse
awareness
saunters in all broken-hearted
and drab like death
on a holiday
somewhere in the balmy grips of
a new Promised Land,
The Bermuda Triangle is an unholy alliance
is a one-way ticket, calling
calling: “All ashore who’s going ashore,”
and my feet are stuck right in the middle
of a putrid shade of melancholia
as if my life had gone out on a limb,
and like some crazed and demented creature with a
perverse glint in its eye
bites my head off
once again,
the residual one
the sepia-toned and melodramatic
Bette Davis-eyed one
I kept in the second floor hall closet,
just in case
the time was now,
and here it is again,
precisely carved in origami-like folds.
I find myself of unskillful means.
I don’t know how to wade through
emptiness or another damning dawn to
pull myself up astutely or marginally at
best, fully clothed in a
beggar’s horse race.
I yearn for bright plumage
I yearn for the warm comfort of a Lover’s
heart.

And if I am not mistaken, someone will find
me, lost but never last in an all but forgotten
jewel-toned Mardi Gras, dancing in the streets
with this pouring winter rain,
carrying a bouquet of light-filled jonquils
bleeding with Christ-like thorns,
rebuilding Palestine one stone at a time.