Vanguard

Even the tortoise
Carries its own citadel,
The babel of voices
Can collapse to total silence,
And the song of sparrows
Don't they mean anything?

The cigarette suspended in your lips
And the lisping of your eyes
The city's sentry of lights
Or the heart's cacophonous rhythm;

Can you smell the stench of fear
One thousand stride away from your reach
But surreptitiously stockpiling bricks
Old as your flesh of stone
In the threadbare defense of heart?

Aren't we desperate with hunger?
Aren't we thirsty for safety and bliss?
What artillery can you yield
Against the famished hunters?
What armada can defeat
The enemy inside our holes?

Like an obstinate beetle
I wore an armour of a ruse
Deluding the melanin of the night
But underhandedly flickering iridescence
I dug a hole to the ground -
A grave for all the merciless struggling
The silence of the shadow was my roar
And this defense is my leonine grace

For in this savage platoon of truth
There's no chance to dodge the bullets
Unless you immolate yourself
Before the superfluity of fingers
And it takes courage to be unafraid.

poem by Norman Santos
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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