 The horse-eater is an origin tale, my origin. The first poem is called The Hunger. The Babalawal said, if the grandfather is a hustler, the son will be a businessman. The grandson will be a beggar. I am the hunger. Refusing to beg on the road, I build roads to other places, hands moving prayerfully, creating what's needed, moving forward on the path, walking where others will not, holding broken things on my way to the ocean where dreams sink, swim, or drown. There is no crown, but there is bread. Crowns are heavy. Bread can be shared. Sometimes the road disappears. We must begin again uphill with a bucket of water that's got a hole in it, add a stone to plug the hole on we go, singing in the storm the child of horse eaters, praying even ground before the bone yard. The species call the horse eaters children. I can only go back three generations. 10 generations are your pantheon of ancestors. I am short six generations. I only go forward. Maybe one day I will go back across to the other side of the graveyard in the ocean if my soul can ever leave the water. But only if I go forward. I only know forward. I am the child of the horse eaters. That's where I began. As far back as I can go to the farm where my grandmother took me, when my mother left me after traveling down Route 66. She stopped to give birth, migrated, a wingless southern bird learned to fly. She left singing freedom blues, looking for new music, leaving my grandmother, the girl from the farm on the side of the hill to claim me, before we went looking for her, traveling like unopened promises in the colored car on the train, clacking across the country, traveling the fate with lunch in grease stained bags. We went to the horse eaters, frozen into the middle of a skinny winter near my birthday Christmas, some winter month filled with unrepented snow packed tight on hard ground. I remember presents, a car coat, red in memory, store bar, warm with a hood, a hand card rocking chair, bell ringing when I rocked, bell and chair left behind. We took the car coat, hood on my head, my face on the train window, steam with my breath. We clapped away from the land, gone from the horse eaters. I wonder what happened to the chair. I wonder what happened to the land. When the children left the horse eaters, the children became teachers, real estate agents. They became nurses, accountants. They went to the city. Perhaps they sold the farm, split the dreams, sweat prayers of the horse eaters into equal parts in pursuit of their place in our song of becoming. I was too little to know. But I remember, remembered the tart, sharp taste of horse flesh. Remember, remembered the smell of the simmering meat. Not the horse's lives so much, but the meal they made. Know now the promise they held fed more than hunger in the body, they fed hunger in the soul. The possibility of becoming nourished souls that survive paper thin times, absent milk, no honey to go to the city, to be other things more than a horse eaters could dream of tilling and sowing with lean harvest, following lean harvest, followed by lean or harvest, with growing children, with dreams of the city. When the snow is on the ground, all you have is what you have. When the house is tarred to keep out the wind, howling like an old lady turned out into the night, rooms going straight back shotgun style, devouring precious land that reluctantly yields life. But inside the house, life is abundant as our dreams. The horse eaters are the children of hunger. They have climbed a steep hill, learned to hold on, buried their hope in stones and dirt, dangling from the side of life, holding on. Their children grow, they pour their love into them, holding on. You must hold on when life wanna shake you out of it. Hold on to what you have if you want more. You must hold on to the land, rested from blood sweat. Bottomless hope on the steep side of the hill. You must hold on or dreams starve. Once the taxes are paid, the tithes tithe. Once the tools are repaired, the stories paid, all the too many bills are paid, all the labor spent is spent. Hunger's dreams remain. When the land won't feed you, fights back refusing to yield. You must hold on. Feed the dreams. The future has to eat. Kill the livestock, all of it down to the horses. Feed the futures dreams. Gravy, grits, full bellies, land that the future will sell to go to the city without the land that we ate horses to save. This piece is called Clear. I am awake, wide-eyed, sure, aware, here, inside, conscious, looking out from knowing. No rose-colored glass is clear, unafraid, clear, sure, here, present in this moment with real wounds transformed into mist of honor as heavy as a crown. Debt's paid in charge of deciding where the line is and who can cross over. Owning my want, suffering, anger, and hope, memories of wars, wars won, wars lost, the cost of all, born warrior. No separation from my protection. God's whisper, the dead translate. I listen. My swords cut both ways. Desert eagles stop doves and hawks from crying. Always fit for the battle. All battles are not fit to be fought. Some are to be understood. Others are to fit you for bigger battles. Some are to bleed you of intention. Never bleed without gaining ground. There is no romance in suffering. Struggle bleeds early graze, nothing. The cost of owning want is heavy, as is struggling not to want. Choose your battles. I've learned to see farther down the road than looking like the distance between hearing, understanding, and pushing back. The wind knows when not to blow, when to be a hurricane, when to push the water over the shore, when to fan the fire. I am unseparated from my knowing. Collar greens, buttermilk, cornbread, sweet potato, if you're lucky. So when else is school, land, house, school, city, country, dream, freedom, justice, wealth, progress, forward movement, manufacturing, the manifestation of rights over others' rights, the right to other others, all the juice boxes, all of the juice boxes in your lunch box. Your daddy on the water found it. Your granddaddy Patton won. Poverty smells like fried chicken in windows, list rooms, painted, no gardens, liquor stores, three strikes, profiling, eviction, Section 8, drug addiction, two small shoes, the word no in dried blood. See, I understand the word. The word is flip-flopping and play dead, like landmines. Like landmines hidden in the dirt, lurking in the funk of being alive, painting reality sometimes using the invisible crayons, singing colorblind anthems, broadcast onto reality, making it hard to understand, really real, hard to separate it from the mesmerizing bitty bops bit by the system humming while you dream, working while you pray, eating your shadow until you are not sure if you are real anymore. I am here, clear, eyes wide, seeing, beyond looking, understanding, beyond hearing, like the distance between knowing and pushing back. Thank you.