Posts for June 1, 2022 (page 9)

Pale-face kid, new in town.

A little bit ginger, bad teeth, whack hair.

No cousins, old sibs. No compass to cool.

The ’70s, both parents working.

No man’s land between haves and have nots.

No man’s land between Chevy and Buick.

No friends to give me a ride in either car.

Lonely.

Found Funk, Cosby, Carlin and Richard.

Learned laughter, timing, punch lines and bass lines.

Alone.

Math. Science. Contact sports.

Nothing for me.

Alphas in rut, chest-shoving assholes.

Loud, scared boys.

Stupid.

Mean.

Girls, always smarter, cunning, searching.

They hold me tight, keeping me in reserve.

Looking over my shoulder for better than me.

Meaner.

Then, Art.

Studio smells right.

Feels right.

Paint-spattered sinks and tables.

The only thing that really makes sense.

1 + 1 isn’t 2. Not if you don’t want it to.

Fuck formulas. No tests.

Does it look right?

Have you invested yourself?

Without fear?

Without reservation?

What is good is always what is pure.

What is good is what doesn’t add up.

Dad. Engineer. Time clock. Necktie.

“Lad, can you make a living at this?”

No reservation.

No fear.

“Yes.”

“Then, go, Boy. Go.”

Sound bound around nouns
Reverberation/acceleration/ determination.
Happiest catalyst at last a satirist.

When wind wallows/ willows burrow shadows.
Be beyond seeing liminal gallows/narrow banal candles.

I fear that happiness is an aptly absence
I leer at gladness in favor of sadness.
Seering some unfortunate detriment
Upon a soul longing for all happenstances.

Eighteen years go by in mere minutes,
amounting to fifteen seconds on a stage 
and an infinite unknown ahead.

Two months, give or take, lie ahead
to bridge the gap between what we have known
for so long now
and what we have yet to figure out.

I have everything I need,
or so they say.

I know everything.
I know nothing.

Four more hours until it all ends
and everything else begins,
and I’ve never been more ready. 

Green-toed and weezy,
these hills ware more on the knees
than they used to. 
Dipping under the trees
and cooling off in the breeze
aren’t the same too.
It takes a lot longer
and gravity feels stronger
than it did 2 years ago
or 4,
or 6.
For 18 years this yard I’ve mowed;
For 26,these seeds I’ve sown
With luscious care and tender tones.
And one day, 
I hope the Lord lets me grow
in the land up-above.

tangled up in you
as bluebirds do
vetting your decay
gloved hands pulling you
weeping your yellowed leaves
anguish crying out
shakily torn from your home
from summered ground
men jeering
lovey, you are so easily renounced
girls flattering
lovey, you were the prettiest in town
if only you knew, as ivy would say
mourning as if her leaves were fully on display

Sand paper trials
are rough times 
in life
and
How we move through the grit 
Will determine
the product 
In the end 

As I drive across town alone,
it’s not just me in the car
but also floating in my bloodstream
memories of the African savannah,
my peripheral vision keen to any movement
and riding along with me,
the long-honed instincts
of the mountain gorilla
and the narrowed eye of the hawk.

Some part of me is always
on alert for danger
and warns me with breezes
coming in through the gill slits–
a slight pooling in the back
of my throat.  Primal
intuition gets me where
I’m going and then leads
me safely home.

Poetry is….provocative said Shakespear to Romeo and Juliet….rudimentray to count numbers as to 1, 2, and 3, and Green Eggs and Ham I Am….lucid making a memory to comprehend memorization to slam before an audience to slam when rehearsed….lines becoming a beautiful system of morality veil in allegory and illustrated by a symbol as is “Nothing Is Just” by Nikki  Giovanni to finalize stanzas comprised as is one body.

A Poet is….Having nevers to rise before an occasion numbered by bodies in an audience dribbling words for the first time because, you to rap sonnets but speak Haiku’s….having the ability to confine emotions
to be released in words that draws a tear to a dry eye surrounded by desert boarders….to Jessica Helen Lopez, Black Ice, Saul Williams, Amir Sulaiman, Kevin Coval, Pam Novoa, and I, BlackTree.

And

Poetry Is a Poet….whose voice remains silent no more….where the stance of their levey is found firm in place against egotism set by dictatorship….Where hallelujah’s are not only shouts praising God, but becomes finger snaps to claps….as is to good and evil, because you can’t have one out do the other that takes control of something never theirs to take credit….For Poetry Is….A Poet to His or Her Words.

Ten minutes until the end
of the world. One hundred
words, give or take, to leave

for those who will succeed
us, namely the cockroaches:
those lords of the post-apocalypse,

mutated to ascendancy
by our self-immolation.
You’re welcome.

Thick, scaly, russet, so tall you lean
your head back to see the crowns.  

Inhale the glossy, stiff needle-tufts at branch ends
arranged in bundles of three—peppery, minty tang.  

As they mature, needles turn golden and fall,
perfectly straight single trunks shed lower branches.  

Late afternoon sun strobes
between them, dizzying you.  

O, to ground yourself, feel with the soles
of your feet the hum of deep taproots, soil-sunk  

root networks, byzantine braiding 
neighbors, lavish lateral expanse,  

the opposite pull of your spine to elongate, rise.