Tag: poems

The Perfect Piece

poetry-and-types-of-poetry

Repost for World Poetry Day.

 

To the lyrically talented
the brave who do not stop at sing-song
and music
but poems whose words themselves
are like melody
like the rhythm of rocking chairs
like serenity
like soldiers stomping truth into the torso of the earth
like Assata’s
like revolution
like Maya Angelou’s
and Ntozake’s
perfect like marching orders
like biblical
like Deborah’s
and Sara’s
like faith
and the wisdom of the eyes
the fire of truth
the sweet delicate of love
real love
the perfect piece

I anxiously anticipate undressing you
pulling back the symbolic layers of your metaphors
and deciphering your definitions
your rhymes curve perfectly around the waist of melodies
and swim better than oceans
you taste
why you taste like deserts springing forth with water
like tongues taste new wine
bringing the heat of our passion together
like fire to chocolate
like when bodies melt
and pens bleed both love and pain
you give birth to both truth and wisdom
the perfect lyric over a tight beat
you’re
the perfect piece

To Write a Heart

How do we trace the outlines of the invisible?
where despair won’t touch you gentle
and secret won’t fingerprint its way out of chest
and won’t poetry its way out of fear
the darkened cave of mankind’s deepest secrets
and treasured desires
the place he enters through the mind
tucking away all inner thought
inner being
inner wish
inner fantasy
that real self
hiding in thought
a storage place for his hopes
his hatreds
dreams and guilt
a peeled off echo of coming and going and knowing better
this is his resort
his vacation away from himself
his place of residence
he lives here
inside the cave made of chest
the place he thinks no one will ever find
can we write the heart?
take it beating
bleeding
and dripping with genuine
soaking with regret,
and repentance,
and expectation,
and nerves all tender like
hanging suspended in the air
or on the closet hooks of his thoughts
under the bed spread of memory
flowing back and forth like waves
we stand knee deep in his tears
our clothing soaked with his love
and his hatred too
can we contextualize the heart?
twist it
turn it
influence its shape so that it fits on these lines
can I drink your thoughts?
so that you relate to lyric
and your heart fits the silhouette of this pen
and puts a dent in white paper

Choices

writing-933262_1920

There are many paths before us,

a starlight fantasy for our dreams

a dose of reality for our truths

and a playground for our games

all candy coated to look alike

and we shackle ourselves

to the decisions, we make

paths unfold like red carpet occasions

so that we may sharpen discernment

and choice spreads its arms wide

like a mother

beckoning for her children

inviting us to lay our head

in her bosom

and there we feed on the free will

to choose our own verdicts

what will history write in our favor

and what will we leave behind?

Choices.

We live on them

like the breath, we breathe

inhale and exhaling ourselves to the next step

what will become of this poem?

will I dare to save a life?

is it possible

that one can live on these words

desperately

nourished simply by the right

to choose

to read them

Memories

nature-river-1080p-wallpaper

Nostalgia’s a nauseating

sickness

like four little girls

still trying to tear down the brick

painted on the sides

of their heads

Pocketbook scriptures still dangling

from underneath

their tongues

like a scorched covenant

under burned fingernails

still trying to get me to

remember

Truth be queasy

like first trimesters

be painful

like birth pains

I heard

a roll of thunder

and laughter more frightening

than decomposed bodies

at the bottom of bi-racial rivers

whispering

like the voice of Emmet

till when?

It asked me.

Before strings of voices erupted from some place

beyond the banks of the James River

from someplace before William Lynch’s arrival

somewhere marchin

stomping on my roots

somewhere printed on the back

of the forbidden fruit, I still

got between my teeth

a string of voices

sprung up

from the oppression

marching down the streets of Birmingham,

Chicago, Georgia, Mississippi, Harlem.

Willie Edwards,

James Chaney,

Michael Donald,

Michael Griffith,

Michael Brown,

Yusef Hawkins,

James Byrd Jr, and Trayvon Martin’s voices

sang hymns of “I told you so’s”

for my memories

like women giving birth

to still born children

Till when?

said Mr. Till.

Will you people continue to give birth

to death

still lying on the bed

of Martin’s dreams?

They sang with an authority

like rolling thunder

and butterflies in my stomach

like truth on top Moses mountain they sang

like earthquakes

cracking my memories into lynched question marks

they sang

like blood-thirsty whales behind slave ships

like ripping flesh

torn open

with Hebrew scriptures

in their veins

they sang

like diseases written into the sky

and prison chains

their voices roared

like a million I told you so’s they sang

like voices do

and they asked me a question

but their words

were few

Till when?

Screamed the segregated

Set-apart

and unequal lungs

of Emmett

Till when?

He sang.

Like the lyrics of Deuteronomy

carried up

Till when will Malcolm,

Booker T.

and Martin King

still dream

before

they wake up?

Why I Write Truth

TextSwag-1465939350231

Because the world is a violent one

and screaming death a song

so routine is its lyrics

crooked notes twisted

and then dropped

like  lifeless bodies

a glass vase

shattering

crackling

like fire on the mountain

and no one seems to be

on the run

I write truth

because its better to spill ink

than blood

Last night

I heard angels mourn

their tears fell like hailstones

from the sky

they told me

another person died

I write truth

because light chose not to shine today

the sun looked down

and vowed that it was too dangerous

on the ground

I write truth

because the world is crying out

cause it ain’t safe no more

not like a piece of paper

and black ink

not safe like blue lines

and poetry

I write truth because

Maya ain’t here no more

and somebody’s got to tell that woman

she’s phenomenal

somebody’s got to sing that man

a song

that ain’t full of lyrics

that bleed

I write truth

because Langston told us

to bring him our heart melodies

that he may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth

away from the two ruff fingers

of the world

dear Langston

here is mine

Dear Poetry

Dear Poetry

I wish I can take your words
and carve them into the sky
as if you alone was the cement at the fingertips
of the Almighty
wish I can
breathe life into your nostrils like I held onto the strings
stapled to the backs of the wind
Dear poetry,
I wish I can copyright your metaphors,
& trademark your similes
Wish I could draw you away from every mouth
whose saliva has not promised to cherish your wisdom
like stomachs rejecting old food
You see I wish that your nutrition could be savored
only in the mouths of those who speak truth
I’m tired
tired of seeing Allegory’s
washed down the drain of unconscious minds who
seek only to dream fairy tales
bathed in rhetoric
to wake up wet with euphoric ignorance
I appeal to the relentless generosity of poetry
to drawback its compassion if it dares
and stop playing the violin on our hearts
like disobedient children that tap dances on their mother’s last nerve
cause
Poetry can change nothing if truth
can’t hit the concrete with a curve
I wish
Wish I could ensure that you are used only when truth spreads its wings like butterflies
nervously flapping inside the jaws of understanding
Like truth when it opens its legs to laws and commandments
and gives birth to obedience
In whose laughter resounds like the deadness of Sara’s womb
I wish
that deception can be buried inside the heavens
like the stars at noontime
that do not wish to be available
only so that our eyes may see something deep.