POEMS FOR THE NEW PREZ

AS WE CONTINUE

we who work
lifetime after lifetime

who learn poverty
learn daily struggle
generation after
generation

we who love ourselves
and our descendants
as our ancestors loved us

slaving in rich men’s
fields, taking their beatings
our beatings

taking their exile
our exile

we who work to survive
will be ready

when our children are
again allowed to play

to return home

for we continue to refuse
to be exiled
lifetime after lifetime
from the Earth.

-DON BRENNAN


MINING THE WRECKAGE 092608

Each day we search the rubble, picking away at
dusty bricks, broken boards, our work gloves
long since shredded, our hands too calloused now
for shallow bleeding.

We are the world’s working classes mining what
hope we are able to find among the wreckage
delivered daily in explosions from heavy guns
mounted by maniacs on top of armored trucks.

Each day we throw aside the broken and useless
bits that have been ripped from our lives, and
from the pieces left intact we put together what
will work for the future, for a future when the
fools’ empires have finally collapsed.

© Don Brennan