for the children of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras

When he was 8 in the white heat of El Infiernito
guarding their fruit truck they murdered his father
and the squawking blue birds of his young hope
flew away into the gut of lovely night
and the proud red plums he held rolled down
the blood alley as rain fell like broken feathers

When he was in the flesh of his blue youth
songs turned to skeletons in his best friend's eyes
they smiled as they slit her white naked throat
and stuffed panties in her red mouth of dreams
that dia de los muertos she became the flowers of graves.
seeing a body was nothing anymore

When he was 12 narcos beat him blind
so he couldn't see their skulls of red death
his tearless baby cousins could only look on
Santa Muerte made him lick the white thighs of crack
"You'll feel freed like a bird entering
 a red cloud in the bruise of blue night"

His dirty government can't pull up its pants.
“If your house is burning, jump out the window"
so he took the lazy train of hopeful skeletons
with a handful of plums and his invisible hope
and crossed the red white and blue border of eagles
like a beautiful feather on the veins of lonely wind