And Hosea heard God say, "Marry the whore and know how I love." The prophet then took as his wife, Gomar, adulterous daughter of Diblain. She bore him three children and God told Hosea to name them Forsaken.

And with this word branded into them the three children wandered into the desert.

The first of these forsaken, a son called Jezreel, walked to a flat place and prostrated himself before God. He asked for mercy for several hours until the sun's heat brought sleep and he never awoke.

The second forsaken child God had named Lo-Ruhamah. She walked past Jezreel's corpse and saw that his lack of searching for water and cover from the sun had ended his days. Lo-Ruhamah found a pool of water and drank. She became sick. The God of her fathers looked away from her and Lo-Ruhamah died.

The third child of Gomar and the prophet was a son named Lo-Ammi, a name Hosea had been given in a vision. Lo-Ammi's mind was simple and his tongue was mute. Thus he could neither call out in prayer to the God of Hosea nor plan a way of survival in the desert.





Many years passed, and Hosea saw his death approaching. He mumbled often of visions, but no one could decipher his words.

Gomar dreamed that one of the three forsaken children still lived in the desert. She awoke and walked to the desert. She found her youngest son in a cave, naked and hairy.

And as the dying prophet mumbled, he saw before him his last child. Lo-Ammi knelt beside the bed of Hosea and placed his ear over his father's mouth.

The prophet died. People gathered around Lo-Ammi to watch him for a sign of the last words of God. This forsaken man looked into the eyes of those gathered and searched them as he turned. Finally he settled on his mother's gaze.

Lo-Ammi took hold of Gomar's dress and ripped it and it fell from her. This forsaken child took the hand of this whore and walked with her away from the crowd, away from his father's house, and into the desert.

Gomar lived out the remainder of her days in the cave of Lo-Ammi. She died giving birth to a daughter, who was mute like her father, and could not be named.

And the unheard breathe paint,
leave their mind in the street,
rotting.

And their mumbled truths are stillborn;
numbness is their peace.

And batons keep them to the broken concrete;
squats and plastic roofs.

And they whisper into the chemical cup,
their only ear and only lover.

And their lost words are prophesy;
God's voice dies here.

I write,
two cups of boxed white in me.
Fear of my temperamental stomach;
fragile flesh.

Death of purity,
death of sin.
Boredom of the real.
Truth with her many sides.

Truth in the eyes of that Bolivian beggar hag
who shakes her hat more fiercely at the whites.

Pisses me off.
I gave her a small coin.
She shakes with a truth.

The omens are all myth,
and the poets prophesy,
suck their language through a straw,
sack o' whiskey,
Plaza de los Heroes.

My wealth is concealed in cloth and lies,
and the lustrador proposes a trade of vests.
"No puedo."
Socialism got no hold on me.

Lust in my deceivin' mouth.
Eyes with the form of truth.
The seer asks,
"How do you value?"
He grips the weakening of words
with a pass of his bag.

I cannot drink.
This omen binds.
I drift through myth into unconsciousness
where morality is neither text nor truth.
It is not,
and thus I sleep.
Warm in my vest.

The drops from the crucifix pool on the cathedral floor. The tired janitor mops the blood again. The only witness. Night by night, removing the blood of the Christ. Night by night, until morning.