Braille

Pray tell, my sleepless child
Without your name, who are you?
Does the color of your skin,
The sly motions of your lips,
Or the canopies underneath
Your sweeping eyelashes
Tell you about your secrets?

The tabularazas in our open palms
Shear the exhumed constitutions
With the blandness of nothingness
Because we are nothing
But blotted pages
And our blood is the ink,
Our contending is the pressing
Of the angrily hissing pen.

Let me take your hand
Into the frowning crevasses
And the pockmarks that
Slanders your skin
Like salient stones
For the dead man,
Slither into these roads
And understand
That we are made
Of bruises and scars

Now let me guide you
Underneath my shirt
Closer to the pounding
Of the harried chest
Inside this cage
Of feral yearning—
A yearning that is
Dangerous

The blue rivers that
Opposed the bloody ripples
Sprang from a chamber:
A pantheon of screams
That was unfettered from
Their vivid dreams

Pray tell, my ignorant child,
Now that you have
Traversed the untaken roads
Will you tell me why
It is so painstaking
To look inside ourselves?

Pray tell, blind soul,
Amongst the pointing fingers
Who can read
This mendacious braille.

poem by Norman Santos
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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