Cruel and Ugly Can’t Kill The Beautiful

By: Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak

Tribal affiliation: Tohono O’odham

I love her when I breathe.

Her laughter implodes inside me,

from somewhere I’ve never been.

I don’t always know what words she’s speaking,

I just hear her heart,

and just know she is in love with me,

because I am completely in love with her.

She is all knowing in my prisms of changing colors.

She is magical, forged from the hearts beyond stars that ever so brightly radiates our connection.

The leaf fell, dried up and died.

She fell somewhere with the leaf in a chaotic fire,

Dying over and over again.

Ashamed in the knowing, in the understanding,

Dying again and again.

Her dreams never deserved any death,

Her existence is too important to be murdered.

Her love breathes with me,

her laughter still implodes.

my love sees her beautiful,

And still, she stands strong, beautiful,

always beyond the depression.

Bold with a red painted hand print on her mouth,

loving me still, loving me still * always.

She will always speak, for she is life,

cruel and ugly can’t kill the beautiful.

Writer bio

Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak is a Traditional Tohono O’odham member from Sells, Arizona. He has lived the American Indian dream, from a broken abusive home to violence and drug dealing to being locked in the system to changing his life around and walking his Redroad to a couple of degrees, and to a career serving his Nation. He has proven to himself and many others that change is possible. His passion is change and the progression and evolution of the Original Peoples before America. He has 15 and a half years drugs, alcohol and violence free and continues to help people struggling in addiction, alcoholism, violence, and toxic lifestyles to change and learn to live a better way. And he also writes a little poetry.