Adversity
All hope is dead
Hate crawls like maggots within a decaying corpse
Misery burns turbulent patterns in a turbulent brain
Innards filled with reptiles of anger and despair
Death looms bereft of sustenance and hope
Sad shrunken skeletons slowly sinking into oblivion
Faint weakened entreaties of a starving waif
Drippy skin hanging off skeletal frames
Hopelessness writ deep in sunken eyes
Fever burns the mother's brow
What can fill the empty intestines, answer the child's hunger pangs?
Tears have dried on withered cheeks, hollow tear ducts crackle emptily
Helpless to slake the infant's thirst, the heart breaks
Every door slammed, who gives a healing touch?
Where the salve for the sweltering sore, where a morsel to stave off death?
Anguish of hopelessness, hunger, pain,
Stretches every nerve, tears asunder entrails
Sunrise is only promise of more despair
The night dulls the agony, but only just
Death. Death alone is freedom
-- Alex Abraham
A Letter to My Mother
Today, I see you walking in the midst of storm and rain
Your fragile little body is shivering with cold
Yet, I hardly hear your sigh
Your tiny feet keep moving forward
despite numbness in your toes
I remember you told me the other day when we had all the time with us
You told me to keep walking in my path
although thorns were hurting my feet
and storm invading my blood vessels with fear
You told me that storm and thorns were like stars
They brightened life with different shades
Mother,
I wish I could erase lines of suffering in your face
and ask the brightest surgeon to perform facial laser surgery on you
Yet it won't help you to ease the pain
I long to put roses in your gray hair
and wash your tiny feet with jasmine
Still, it will belittle many years of your commitment as a mother to me
Mother
Your love, your courage and strength are infinite
Your serene face is forever drawn in my heart
My gratitude to you is as boundless as the horizon
It will never end and I truly love you
-- Permata Hamid, Surabaya, Dec. 22, 1997