Tag: life

Why Poets Are Poor

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I am NOT your Sonia Sanchez, your Langston Hughes, your James Baldwin or Maya Angelou. In fact, my name may never find itself uttered among the world greats. And I’m fine with that. No, I LOVE that.

Not ALL poets are poor, but I think the best ones are. They are the people who still keep notebooks, who carry life, love, frustration, and pain; an endless conglomerate of emotions, a pencil and pad in their purses and suitcases. These people write during lunch, on blog posts, and between rocks and hard places. They are not baptized by the lens of cameras and they publish books because they want to read them.

Yes indeed, poor poets are the best. Though money can be made, I wouldn’t recommend someone dedicate poetry to a career that forces one to write or be restricted to certain topics. I think a good poem takes patience. That one must wait and listen. As a career, this may require one to write on demand. This, I believe, robs the poet of all sincerity, and degrades the passion of his piece. Rainer Maria Rilke said it  best:

“To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains for which I am grateful: Patience is all.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Cousin

black-girl

She walks but she sleeps…
she sleeps her way down 35th street,

Chicago’s State Streets.
The project life booming
lights
camera
action,
whistles blowing the street life calling
undressing her body with its eyes
for she blooms into this new body just as suddenly as the sky rises
she rises
into womanhood…….
since that first flow of blood sent hormones racing against waves she sleeps
with those waves
feelings of pretend love from the streets
swallow that pill of ignorance,
dazed in ecstasy
she sleeps.

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Hennessy bottles, homo sags and Baphomet signs,

he sleeps
getting this paper either on the basketball court or the recording studio he stays true to the streets, so he thinks.
Blind hormones and rap songz creating another generation of sleepers
too bad he doesn’t know
that by the age of 10 he’s already red listed as one of NYPD’s takers.
polished A-k 47’s eagerly await just 8 more years until it’s their turn to accidentally
shoot away what consciousness he’s got left.
But he sleeps
and she sleeps
living dreams to the fullest only to never realize that it was just a dream
living life to the fullest only to die
wake up and not live.
never giving ourselves the opportunity to realize that sleep is just the cousin of death.
Because the almighty never sleeps

and his righteous angels you see they don’t sleep
and the messiah died
dying physically
only to wake up from this sort of temporary sleep because he was ordained to never sleep again.
cause you can only live once…..physically
your body’s life fading away in the distance
rats and insects tearing away at past dreams of disobedience
but will you ever wake up from this past slumber and really live?
or will you sleep,
and sleep,
and sleep…
to become more acquainted
with the cousin of death.