Stains
Jose Chavez Inestroza
The sun is scorching hot.
It makes my stained white shirt look whiter.
Green and white and brown.
The colors of the landscape are so beautiful
but what an ugly setting.
My hands feel like bricks.
Sometimes they feel lighter
because of the vegetation's hydration.
They also feel lighter because of my tears.
My eyes are blood stained.
My muscles ache while my heart breaks.
I work and work till the night falls just to wake up again.
What is this?
Where did my hope go?
Where did my dreams go?
Are these “modern times"?
Slavery was in the times of before, so where are we in time?
My brothers and sisters cry in silence
because they are silenced.
Like the pistol being held to their head.
They sleep at night with tears in their eyes.
Tears fueling the false American dream.
The tears flow away into nothing.
That is the American dream.
That is the American nightmare.
A nightmare where you’re lied to.
A nasty dream, all stained.
You can try to scrub,
the stain is so deep in though, deep into your skin,
into your veins, into your brain.