Sagaba

(the wind… the wind…)

Sister sits on the steps
Cigarette rests on fingertips
Takes a sip of slow death deathly through her lips,
She blows a kiss
Which I can only resist in vain
She got the gift of gravity pulling to ask her name
She says Sagaba
What’s it mean – she says in Ilocano
it translates into suffering
I’m pondering the irony to conjure up the fearlessness to find a conversation
She offers me a square, I decline the invitation
It reminds me of the days when I would chain smoke
Broken with no hope
Like broken like the manner she spoke
We both
Two people seeking
Solace and remembrance
And wondering if miracles were meant for us
But intent was just an innocent thought between a sister and a brother
Who been building in the guidance of a mother
And the storyteller stops
Waiting for the beat to drop
Gathering his thoughts in the wind, breathing in like…

Now
I couldn’t stand to see the queen breathe her dreams away
And tell me her tomorrow will never become today
I say I used to know a woman just like you,
Beautiful but jaded by the multitude of men who’d often try to
Justify their lies with twisted notions of survival
And hide behind their armor when karma completes a cycle
She replied
That just because I knew a woman well it doesn’t mean I know them all
She begins to bade farewell
Eyes up to the sky, she sighs, I need nobody
True indeed, sister, but you still need everybody because
We hardly know ourselves if we know nobody else
And only in our loneliness can home become a hell
Exhale
The cloud in the loudest form of silence
Watches as it rises like suns over horizons
The storyteller stops
Waiting for the beat to drop
Gathering his thoughts in the cloud, breathing out like…

Dreams be the ashes
Burns and thrashing in the wind
Flying out the burning bush attached to sister’s hand
Who whispers “word”
Smiling and giving thanks, living in doubt no longer
As she figures out the riddle to the song
Saying why must we suffer now and not suffer later if later
Never comes soon enough to soothe the hatred
And hatred
Is the cancer born ____ of love’s absence
And the absence is the void left from missing every chance to
Challenge our fates and perhaps our very names
Sister says peace and prayers for rain and change
Tosses out her lighter
Walks out of the cipher
For shizzle it starts to drizzle and then I begin to write this
Inhale the imagery – a queen walking steadily
Effortlessly
Ready to be
Every woman and now the
Story teller ends
Waiting for the beat to fade
Gathering his thought near the edge of the day like…