the return of OPP...

[upfromsumdirt]

other people's poetry...

this one's from etheridge knight...

As You Leave Me

Shiny record albums scattered over
the living room floor, reflecting light
from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt
my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters,
the beer foam making mustaches on your lips.

And, too,
the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes
fascinate me--almost as much as the dimples
in your cheeks, your arms and your legs.

You
hum along with Mathis--how you love Mathis!
with his burnished hair and quicksilver voice that dances
among the stars and whirls through canyons
like windblown snow, sometimes I think that Mathis
could take you from me if you could be complete
without me. I glance at my watch. It is now time.

You rise,
silently, and to the bedroom and the paint;
on the lips red, on the eyes black,
and I lean in the doorway and smoke, and see you
grow old before my eyes, and smoke, why do you
chatter while you dress? and smile when you grab
your large leather purse? don't you know that when you leave me
I walk to the window and watch you? and light
a reefer as I watch you? and I die as I watch you
disappear in the dark streets
to whistle and smile at the johns



same person. different poem.


Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane

Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
and we all waited and watched, like a herd of sheep,
To see if the WORD was true.

As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "he set
The record for time in the Hole-67 straight days!"
"Ol Hard Rock! man, that's one crazy nigger."
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw on the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.

The testing came to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch
And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
From before shook him down and barked in his face
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and look silly.
His empty eyes like knot holes in a fence.

And even after we discovered that it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his name,
we told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long.
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do.
The fears of years like a biting whip,
Had cut deep bloody grooves
Across our backs.

[writeone73]

Natasha Trethewey is the BOMB! Her father, Eric, is white and teaches English at Hollins University. Her mom was black and died at the hands of her second husband. Really sad. Anyway, this poem is from her first book, 'Domestic Work"

Flounder

Here, she said, put this on your head.
She handed me a hat.
you 'bout as white as your dad,
and you gon stay like that.

Aunt Sugar rolled her nylons down
around each bony ankle,
and I rolled down my white knee socks
letting my thin legs dangle,

circling them just above water
and silver backs of minnows
flitting here then there between
the sun spots and the shadows.

This is how you hold the pole
to cast the line out straight.
Now put that worm on your hook,
throw it out and wait.

She sat spitting tobacco juice
into a coffee cup.
Hunkered down when she felt the bite,
jerked the pole straight up

reeling and tugging hard at the fish
that wriggled and tried to fight back.
A flounder, she said, and you can tell
'cause one of its sides is black.

The other is white, she said.
It landed with a thump.
I stood there watching that fish flip-flop,
switch sides with every jump.

[neil]

.
Proclamation Without Pretension
Tristan Tzara [1896-1963]

Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance

MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage

THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding. I write because it is
natural exactly the way I piss the way I'm sick

ART NEEDS AN OPERATION

Art is a PRETENSION warmed by the
TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, the hysteria born
in THE STUDIO

We are in search of
the force that is direct pure sober
UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING
we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-
STANT

the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics

At this moment I hate the man who whispers
before the intermission-eau de cologne-
sour theatre. THE JOYOUS WIND

If each man says the opposite it is because he is
right

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight of images

above the rules of the
and its control

BEAUTIFUL

It is not for the sawed-off imps
who still worship their navel

*************************

Cinema Calendar Of The Abstract Heart - 09
Tristan Tzara [1896-1963]

the fibres give in to your starry warmth
a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the rivers' magic
and i've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake
has snapped the sabre
but the dance round terrace tables
shuts in the shock of the marble shudder
new sober

[writeone73]

neil i had to read "the dada manifesto" in world lit last semester. i was so confused, but that's what tzara wanted. that was the whole point of the dada group.

thanks for making me relive my nightmare. LOL

[neil]

.
i don't blame you.
the manifesto was drivel.
when the crew calmed down
and figured out that they
were still expected to act
like adults, they started to
produce some stuff of
lasting value ... though
not attractive to a wide
audience.

perhaps i should check
with you on future selections
before posting.

don't want anybody pinnin
they nightmarrs on me.
hunh-uhn.

[morethanmud]

The Godzilla Sestina
by bao phi
baophi.com/poetry.html

Under the ocean where I was created
in a womb of dancing atoms, a tectonic tale
is breaking the skin of sea floor. Dreams burn here:
lava flows underwater like bleeding fireballs,
sunless sleep disturbed as they listened
for the sound of the nightmares they dropped.

Fat Man and the Little Boy drop,
like two suns tumbling, sent to destroy creation,
no one will be left alive to listen
for the lessons we need to learn from this tale,
just a skyline made of a blossoming fireball
and a symphony of silenced screams horrible beyond hearing.

So I'm born, a radiating thunder lizard, here
to crush American Dreams as my footfalls drop
like apocalypse, and from my lips a chorus of fireballs
razes all that you have created
like runaway rays of sun, my tail
too large to fit in your streets, listen

to see if your superheroes will sing if no one listens,
their words so tired that no one hears,
flag colored costumes useless in this tale.
Look at the sky for God, for an answer, to see if black rain drops,
to see this towering monster created
by the heat of a million rabid fireballs

unleashed on a people turned to ash by the fire, balled
fists and screams evaporated while history listens.
I loom, people scramble in my jagged eclipse, the penumbra I created
is shaped like the ghost of the Enola Gay flying across the moon. Here,
I will illuminate your whispered crimes as the indigo of night drops
before your story is fully told.

Children will sleep trembling under my tail,
the threat of my story like a guillotine of fireballs,
a sharp string of ghastly stars waiting to drop
because even before this lesson, they should have listened,
before we came to this, they should have heard,
they should have known what would be created.

I speak english in this tale, but they don't listen,
so I speak in fireballs, the language they hear,
the nightmare they dropped, the monster they created.

[upfromsumdirt]

the black unicorn
by audre lorde

The black unicorn is greedy.
The black unicorn is impatient.
'The black unicorn was mistaken
for a shadow or symbol
and taken
through a cold country
where mist painted mockeries
of my fury.
It is not on her lap where the horn rests
but deep in her moonpit
growing.
The black unicorn is restless
the black unicorn is unrelenting
the black unicorn is not
free.

[upfromsumdirt]

alotta langston hughes...

Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria


Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.




As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!




Cross


My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?



Democracy

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.


Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?



Ennui


It's such a
Bore
Being always
Poor.



Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.



Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
<BR>(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!



Minstrel Man


Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?



Sea Calm

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.


Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

[upfromsumdirt]

a piece i came across on myspace...
the portuguese version can be heard here:
profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=97699839
(lovin the feel and sound of it in its native tongue/but the translation is dope too!)


A SILENCE INVADES ME (LISBON CONFERENCE)

LISBON CONFERENCE

A silence invades me
Almost uncomfortable
Whenever I see the arts used as an excuse
For reflections on the Afro-Portuguese community
In a contemporary context
I believe that today
The role of a teacher
In an urban society
Is more important than that of a musician
As the image of a family
Gathered together at dinner
In neighbourhoods such as 'Damaia' or Cova da Moura
Has more depth
Than any painting or theatrical performance
Art, probably
Is not the best vehicle to show
The face of this 'mulatto' Lisbon
Nevertheless, I acknowledge
That it plays a central role
In contradicting those who still think
That the only interesting chapters
About Africa and the Africans
Are safaris and catastrophes
That we see through the media
It seems that Africa only tells us of crises
The latest floods
The countless victims of the latest civil war
The latest genocide,
The latest statistic reports
About the growing number of AIDS victims
Or about the latest persons to drown
Or to be arrested as they tried to get across to Gibraltar
After dinner or on weekend afternoons
Extensive documentaries
About idyllical landscapes in Serengeti
The fabulous fauna
Or the splendid dunes of Sahara or Namibia
The natural wonders of Africa as TV entertainment
And the African social nightmare
When the time for truth comes
For a certain truth as Pep Subiros said.
It's the truth that awakens my interest when looking
At other African capitals such as:
Paris, London and Lisbon
Things that help me understand Africa
Africa's children; her heroes and dreams;
Her democracies, dictatorships and fears;
Africa's 'Zonas J'; 'Outros Bairros' and 'Albertos'
Where tiny, ordinary and insignificant things
And the generosity of sharing simple feelings
Make me smile
Their innocence moves me
Because it reminds me that however urban-global
Their aspirations might be
The rural-local compromises
Inherited from other generations
Remain almost undamaged
The disconnection of this generation, so often discussed
Doesn't lie in their African origins
Neither in that old story of parents passing on the idea of Africa
It lies in one simple detail
They are black.
There is nothing wrong in being Afro-Portuguese
The danger is not being aware
American brothers at a certain time
Called themselves Afro-Americans
Why?
Why did Malcolm X defend
Fervently the black return
To their mother land
But after a trip to Africa
Stated that America was his home?
It is not the colour of our skin, nor 'saudade'
That makes us belong to a certain place
Nor do works of art have an obligation
Or duty to set off revolutions
Or a small cultural revolution
That so many 'afrocentrics' long for
What interests me, above all is
To know whether any workmanship
Or art object contributes or not
To the cultural evolution
The evolution has no space
For nostalgia
The return, to return
Coming back or remembering makes everything more difficult
Our past was black or white
Depending on the view and the point
Only evolution comes to be truly
Multicultural
The multiculturalism that I notice
In some young people I come across
Young people that look like Alberto
Some are 'pulas' to their soul
They were born at 'Alfredo da Costa'
Live in neighbourhoods like Olivais
Speak the 'crioulo' of Santiago
Dance 'kizomba' and 'kuduro'
With more passion that some blacks back in the homeland
Know how to rhyme and have no pretensions
And maybe, without knowing
They are rewriting the censured history
Of this country that has merged with Africa
Ever since the Algarve is the Algarve

translated to English from Portuguese
KALAF ANGELO
Lisbon, Portugal
2005
written for Secret Voices - No Time For Silence
Kalaf's voice was recorded in Lisbon, Portugal by Joao 'Lil John' Barbosa
at Get Plugged Studio


footnotes:

1 'Damaia' - Suburban district near Lisbon with a large African community
2 Cova da Moura - Suburban district near Lisbon with a large African community
3 mulatto - A Portuguese word that defines a person of mixed African and white descent
4 Pep Subiros - Curator of 'Africas', an exhibition of African contemporaries art in Centre de Cultura Contemp�rania de Barcelona, 2002
5 'Zona J' is a Portuguese film directed by Lionel Viera about Africans who live in a social housing neighbourhood in Lisbon.
6 'Outros Bairros'[Other neighbourhood] is a documentary directed by Kiluanje Liberdade, Vasco Pimentel and In�s Gon�alves about a second-generation African emigrants in Portugal
7 'O Fato Completo ou Procura de Alberto' directed by In�s de Medeiros is a film about a director searching for a young black person born and raised in Lisbon to play the main part in the film.
8 pulas - Portuguese slang word for a white.
9 Alfredo da Costa - Lisbon�s old and best-known maternity hospital
10 Olivais - Neighbourhood in Lisbon
11 crioulo - Local language spoken on a Cape Verde island
12 kizomba - A music genera with roots in Zook, which is very popular among Angolans and Cape Verdeans.
13 kuduro - A dance music genera created by Angolans and very popular in African clubs in Lisbon.
14 Algarve - Province in the south of Portugal, once ruled by the Moors and where the Portuguese maritime journeys first set off on their world conquest in the 14th century

[upfromsumdirt]

i lost the original site and the sista's name, but
this is dopeshit...
"news of the weird"
cache.libsyn.com/miporadio/News_of_the_Weird.mp3

[upfromsumdirt]

Three poems by Cherryl Floyd-Miller


Orange

I try to tell the cashier at the Sears counter;
she puckers and continues folding the polo shirts/

a short brown woman with a clipboard and pen;
Mek we get de numbuhs. Yuh get pay, she says/

the mall cop leaned against a corner at a kiosk
guarding the gulp-size cup with a pinstripe straw/

even the little girl, plaits flying, who has fled her parents,
for the mottled show glass at The Cookie Factory,

but none of them will see him:

The wild haired man in bright orange corrections issue,
D-O-J stenciled on his back,
feet chain-cuffed, hands free,
his buck eyes little roving suns.

I see him seeing me:

a woman who has lost her goldfish,
the clear plastic temporary aquarium
punctured by my nails, falls to the floor,
bursts. The lone fish, wriggling
tail and fin in the new puddle,
is drowning in the cool air.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Defecting: A Bop for Exit Signs

Away. In rock shoulders. Rambling mountain
roads have corners. These things I work to remember:
Wild billy goat with lopsided mouth of earth and weed;
in a field, a rusted water pump; cotton; white sun; static
of the tires turning against the road. This to forget: The voices
we put on at home here with me in the car.

I’ll be a bag of bones driving down the road alone.

I could turn back? Yield the distance I’ve come to leave you
where you are. Taste more whiskey in your kisses. Be ugly
and in love again? Three wooden crosses every twenty miles.
Has somebody died for me? Eighteen-wheeler rigs clawing
five-degree inclines. Emergency exit ramps. Water springs
from the rock. Our silver up for hock. The signs: Peach cider
and bargain fireworks. Everything – anything – sells.

I waited ‘til I saw the sun. I don’t know why I didn’t come.

I might miss your shameless flowers. Gaga gazing. Knowing
with my eyes closed where you are. Now I have no special
place to be. The road always makes me run. Days and half
the nights are my own. A stranger’s in my car alone,
tuning the radio for music. Any old song will do. I’m a hundred
miles from home.


Something has to make you run. I don’t know why I didn’t come.
Don’t know why I didn’t come.

*Italicized repetitions are a refrain from Nora Jones’s “I Didn’t Come.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celie in Atlanta

dearGod,

Shug be a man now.
She got raspy chest hair and grunt.
Every time my shug be on the phone to X,
croonin’ low buzz and lovely whir,
I be boilin’ grits, over butane
clangin’ butter in spoons.

[writeone73]

Phebus Etienne, 1965-2007 (RIP)

CHAINSTITCHING

After I buried my mother, I would see her often,
standing at the foot of my bed
in a handmade nightgown she trimmed with lace
whenever I was restless with fever or menstrual cramps.
I was not afraid, and if her appearance was a delusion,
it only confirmed my heritage.
Haitians always have relationships with the dead.
Each Sabbath, I lit a candle that burned for seven days.
I created an altar on the top shelf of an old television cart.
It was decorated with her Bible, a copy of The Three Musketeers,
freesia, delphinium or lilies if they were in season.
My offering of her favorite things didn't conjure
conversations with her spirit as I had hoped.
But there was a dream or two where she was happy,
garnets dangling from her ears,
and one night she shuffled some papers,
which could have been history of my difficult luck
because she said, "We have to do something about this."

She hasn't visited me for months.
I worry that my life is an insult to her memory,
that she looks in and turns away
because I didn't remain a virgin until I married,
because my debts will remain unforgiven.

Lightning tattoos the elms as florists make
corsages to honor living mothers.
I think of going to mass at St. Anne, where she was startled
by the fire of wine when she received her first communion.
But I remember that first Mother's Day without her,
how it pissed me off to watch a seventy year-old daughter
escort her mom to sip from the chalice.

Yesterday, as the rain fell warm on the azaleas,
I planted creeping phlox on my mother's grace,
urging the miniature flowers to bloom larger next year
like the velvet petals of bougainvillea that covered our neighbor's gate.
I crave a yard to plant lemon and mango trees as she did.
Tonight I mold dumplings for pumpkin stew,
add a dash of vinegar for spice as she taught me,
sprinkle my palms with flour before rolling the dough between them.
I will thread my needle and embroider a coconut tree on a place mat,
keep stitching her presence in my life.

[stirred~UP]

Alone

by Maya Angelou
- - - - - - - - - - - -


Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


From Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well By Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1975 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted with permission of Random House, Inc. For online information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, visit the website at www.randomhouse.com.



so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski


if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or

fame,

don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don't do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,

don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.





if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.



if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you're not ready.



don't be like so many writers,

don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don't add to that.

don't do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don't do it.



when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.



there is no other way.



and there never was.


From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

[writeone73]

Oh yes. Here's some Li-Young Lee, who I'd marry if he was still single.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.


She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.


My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.


But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

[goddessoflight]

Lucille Clifton...love this sisters work...posted an interview with her also...


Homage to My Hips


these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

[goddessoflight]

Paul Lawrence Dunbar June 27, 1872-February 9, 1906
Bio Link www.dunbarsite.org/biopld.asp


When Malindy Sings

G'WAY an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy --
Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
Ef you practise twell you're gray,
You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F'om de kitchen to be big woods
When Malindy sings.

You ain't got de nachel o'gans
Fu' to make de soun' come right,
You ain't got de tu'ns an' twistin's
Fu' to make it sweet an' light.
Tell you one thing now, Miss Lucy,
An' I'm tellin' you fu' true,
When hit comes to raal right singin',
'T ain't no easy thing to do.

Easy 'nough fu' folks to hollah,
Lookin' at de lines an' dots,
When dey ain't no one kin sence it,
An' de chune comes in, in spots;
But fu' real melojous music,
Dat jes' strikes yo' hea't and clings,
Jes' you stan' an' listen wif me
When Malindy sings.

Ain't you nevah hyeahd Malindy?
Blessed soul, tek up de cross!
Look hyeah, ain't you jokin', honey?
Well, you don't know whut you los'.
Y' ought to hyeah dat gal a-wa'blin',
Robins, la'ks, an' all dem things,
Heish dey moufs an' hides dey faces
When Malindy sings.

Fiddlin' man jes' stop his fiddlin',
Lay his fiddle on de she'f;
Mockin'-bird quit tryin' to whistle,
'Cause he jes' so shamed hisse'f.
Folks a-playin' on de banjo
Draps dey fingahs on de strings--
Bless yo' soul--fu'gits to move em,
When Malindy sings.

She jes' spreads huh mouf and hollahs,
"Come to Jesus," twell you hyeah
Sinnahs' tremblin' steps and voices,
Timid-lak a-drawin' neah;
Den she tu'ns to "Rock of Ages,"
Simply to de cross she clings,
An' you fin' yo' teahs a-drappin'
When Malindy sings.

Who dat says dat humble praises
Wif de Master nevah counts?
Heish yo' mouf, I hyeah dat music,
Ez hit rises up an' mounts--
Floatin' by de hills an' valleys,
Way above dis buryin' sod,
Ez hit makes its way in glory
To de very gates of God!

Oh, hit's sweetah dan de music
Of an edicated band;
An' hit's dearah dan de battle's
Song o' triumph in de lan'.
It seems holier dan evenin'
When de solemn chu'ch bell rings,
Ez I sit an' ca'mly listen
While Malindy sings.

Towsah, stop dat ba'kin', hyeah me!
Mandy, mek dat chile keep still;
Don't you hyeah de echoes callin'
F'om de valley to de hill?
Let me listen, I can hyeah it,
Th'oo de bresh of angels' wings,
Sof' an' sweet, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,"
Ez Malindy sings.

Paradox

I AM the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.

White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.

Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.

Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.

Down to the grave will I take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife;
Then shalt thou see me and know me--
Death, then, no longer, but life.

Then shalt thou sing at my coming,
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of Death.

Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I'll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.


The Right to Die

I HAVE no fancy for that ancient cant
That makes us masters of our destinies,
And not our lives, to hold or give them up
As will directs; I cannot, will not think
That men, the subtle worms, who plot and plan
And scheme and calculate with such shrewd wit,
Are such great blund'ring fools as not to know
When they have lived enough.
Men court not death
When there are sweets still left in life to taste.
Nor will a brave man choose to live when he,
Full deeply drunk of life, has reached the dregs,
And knows that now but bitterness remains.
He is the coward who, outfaced in this,
Fears the false goblins of another life.
I honor him who being much harassed
Drinks of sweet courage until drunk of it,--
Then seizing Death, reluctant, by the hand,
Leaps with him, fearless, to eternal peace!

Ode to Ethiopia
O Mother Race! to thee I bring
This pledge of faith unwavering,
This tribute to thy glory.
I know the pangs which thou didst feel,
When Slavery crushed thee with its heel,
With thy dear blood all gory.

Sad days were those--ah, sad indeed!
But through the land the fruitful seed
Of better times was growing.
The plant of freedom upward sprung,
And spread its leaves so fresh and young--
Its blossoms now are blowing.

On every hand in this fair land,
Proud Ethiope's swarthy children stand
Beside their fairer neighbor;
The forests flee before their stroke,
Their hammers ring, their forges smoke,--
They stir in honest labour.

They tread the fields where honour calls;
Their voices sound through senate halls
In majesty and power.
To right they cling; the hymns they sing
Up to the skies in beauty ring,
And bolder grow each hour.

Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul;
Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll
In characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky
Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.

Thou hast the right to noble pride,
Whose spotless robes were purified
By blood's severe baptism.
Upon thy brow the cross was laid,
And labour's painful sweat-beads made
A consecrating chrism.

No other race, or white or black,
When bound as thou wert, to the rack,
So seldom stooped to grieving;
No other race, when free again,
Forgot the past and proved them men
So noble in forgiving.

Go on and up! Our souls and eyes
Shall follow thy continuous rise;
Our ears shall list thy story
From bards who from thy root shall spring,
And proudly tune their lyres to sing
Of Ethiopia's glory.

[apaxicana]

ONE FOR ALL NEWBORNS
By Thylias Moss

They kick and flail like crabs on their backs.
Parents outside the nursery window do not believe
they might raise assassins or thieves, at the very worst.
a poet or obscure jazz Musician whose politics
spill loudly from his horn.
Everything about it was wonderful, the method
of conception, the gestation, the womb opening
in perfect analogy to the mind's expansion.
Then the dark succession of constricting years,
mother competing with daughter for beauty and losing,
varicose veins and hot-water bottles, joy boiled away,
the arrival of knowledge that eyes are birds with clipped wings,
the sun at a 30° angle and unable to go higher, parents
who cannot push anymore, who stay by the window
looking for signs of spring
and the less familiar gait of grown progeny.
I am now at the age where I must begin to pay
for the way I treated my mother. My daughter is just like me.
The long trip home is further delayed, my presence
keeps the plane on the ground. If I get off, it will fly.
The propeller is a cross spinning like a buzz saw
about to cut through me. I am haunted and my mother is not dead.
The miracle was not birth but that I lived despite my crimes.
I treated God badly also; he is another parent
watching his kids through a window, eager to be proud
of his creation, looking for signs of spring.

From Small Congregations, Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ
Online Source: www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/95/Oct95/mosspoem.html

ALL IS NOT LOST WHEN DREAMS ARE

1.
The dreams float like votive lilies
then melt.

It is the way they sing
going down that I envy and to hear it

I could not rescue them. A dirge
reaches my ears like a corkscrew of smoke
And it sits behind my eyes like a piano roll
Some say this is miracle water
None say dreams made it so

2.
Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for
And flew out of the stream
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun
and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl
when it's broiled

The Titanic is the one that got away.

Online Source: tswww.cc.emory.edu/~mkarunu/poetry/moss.html


TORNADOS

Truth is, I envy them
not because they dance; I out jitterbug them
as I'm shuttled through and through legs
strong as looms, weaving time. They
do black more justice than I, frenzy
of conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hair
on end, result of the charge when horns and strings release
the pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement
is not wrath, not hormone swarm because
I saw my first forming above the church a surrogate
steeple. The morning of my first baptism and
salvation already tangible, funnel for the spirit
coming into me without losing a drop, my black
guardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

get out, I looked over Jordan and what did I see coming for
to carry me home. Regardez, it all comes back, even the first
grade French, when the tornado stirs up the past, bewitched spoon
lost in its own spin, like a roulette wheel that won't
be steered like the world. They drove me underground,
tornado watches and warnings, atomic bomb drills. Adult
storms so I had to leave the room. Truth is

the tornado is a perfect nappy curl, tightly wound,
spinning wildly when I try to tamper with its nature, shunning
the hot comb and pressing oil even though if absolutely straight
I'd have the longest hair in the world. Bouffant tornadic
crown taking the royal path on a trip to town, stroll down
Tornado Alley where it intersects Memory Lane. Smoky spirit-
clouds, shadows searching for what cast them.

Online Source: tswww.cc.emory.edu/~mkarunu/poetry/moss.html


THE RAPTURE OF DRY ICE BURNING OFF SKIN AS THE MOMENT OF THE SOUL'S APOTHEOSIS

How will we get used to joy
if we won't hold onto it?

Not even extinction stops me; when
I've sufficient craving, I follow the buffalo,
their hair hanging below their stomachs like
fringes on Tiffany lampshades; they can be turned on
so can I by a stampede, footsteps whose sound
is my heart souped up, doctored, ninety pounds
running off a semi's invincible engine. Buffalo
heaven is Niagara Falls. There their spirit
gushes. There they still stampede and power
the generators that operate the Tiffany lamps
that let us see in some of the dark. Snow
inundates the city bearing their name; buffalo
spirit chips later melt to feed the underground,
the politically dredlocked tendrils of roots. And this
has no place in reality, is trivial juxtaposed with

the faces of addicts, their eyes practically as sunken
as extinction, gray ripples like hurdlers' track lanes
under them, pupils like just more needle sites.
And their arms: flesh trying for a moon apprenticeship,
a celestial antibody. Every time I use it
the umbrella is turned inside out,
metal veins, totally hardened arteries and survival
without anything flowing within, nothing saying
life came from the sea, from anywhere but coincidence
or God's ulcer, revealed. Yet also, inside out
the umbrella tries to be a bouquet, or at least
the rugged wrapping for one that must endure much,
without dispensing coherent parcels of scent,
before the refuge of vase in a room already accustomed
to withering mind and retreating skin. But the smell
of the flowers lifts the corners of the mouth as if
the man at the center of this remorse has lifted her
in a waltz. This is as true as sickness. The Jehovah's

Witness will come to my door any minute with tracts, an
inflexible agenda and I won't let him in because
I'm painting a rosy picture with only blue and
yellow (sadness and cowardice).
I'm something of an alchemist. Extinct.
He would tell me time is running out.
I would correct him: time ran out; that's why
history repeats itself, why we can't advance.
What joy will come has to be here right now: Cheer
to wash the dirt away, Twenty Mule Team Borax and
Arm & Hammer to magnify Cheer's power, lemon-scented
bleach and ammonia to trick the nose, improved--changed--
Tide, almost all-purpose starch that cures any limpness
except impotence. Celebrate that there's Mastercard
to rule us, bring us to our knees, the protocol we follow
in the presence of the head of our state of ruin, the
official with us all the time, not inaccessible in
palaces or White Houses or Kremlins. Besides every
ritual is stylized, has patterns and repetitions
suitable for adaptation to dance. Here come toe shoes,
brushstrokes, oxymorons. Joy

is at our tongue tips: let the great thirsts and hungers
of the world be the marvelous thirsts, glorious hungers.
Let hearbreak be alternative to coffeebreak, five
midmorning minutes devoted to emotion.

Online Source: tswww.cc.emory.edu/~mkarunu/poetry/moss.html


Raising a Humid Flag

Enough women over thirty are at Redbones for
the smell of Dixie Peach to translate the air.
I drink when I'm there because you must have
some transparency in this life and you can't see
through the glass till it's empty. Of course I get
next to men with broad feet and bull nostrils to
ward off isolation. You go to Redbones after
you've been everywhere else and can see the rainbow
as fraud, a colorful frown.
The best part is after midnight when the crowd
at its thickest raises a humid flag and hotcombed
hair reverts to nappy origins. I go to Redbones to
put an end to denial. Dixie Peach is a heavy pomade
like canned-ham gelatin. As it drips down foreheads
and necks, it's like tallow dripping down candles
in sacred places.

From AT REDBONES, CSU Poetry Series XXIX.
Copyright © 1998 Thylias Moss.
Online Source: civic.uml.edu/bridge2/andover/moss.html

[apaxicana]

Can't escape the heat
Disguised as a memory
Howling at the sky
Always chasing almost love that way
Loaded heart in the need to run
Almost always chasing love that way
There's a way you're expected to obey
Don't bite the hand that feeds you
Don't you know what freedom means
Bad dog Bad dog
--John Trudell, "Bad Dog"

[apaxicana]

The poetry of Joy Harjo

CALL IT FEAR


There is this edge where shadows
and bones of some of us walk
backwards.
Talk backwards. There is this edge
call it an ocean of fear of the dark. Or
name it with other songs. Under our ribs
our hearts are bloody stars. Shine on
shine on, and horses in their galloping flight
strike the curve of ribs.
Heartbeat
and breathe back back sharply. Breathe
backwards.

There is this edge within me
I saw it once
an August Sunday morning when the heat hadn't
left this earth. And Goodluck
sat sleeping next to me in the truck.
We had never broken through the edge of the
singing at four a.m.
We had only wanted to talk, to hear
any other voice to stay alive.
And there was this edge--
not the drop of sandy rock cliff
bones of volcanic earth into
Albuquerque.

Not that,
but a string of shadow horses kicking
and pulling me out of my belly,
not into the Rio Grande but into the music
barely coming through
Sunday church singing
from the radio. Battery worn-down but the voices
talking backwards.


RAIN


Bobby flew out from his body
on Nine Mile Hill.
You could say it was a Navajo semi
careening down the earth
or his wife, pregnant and drunk
who caused his lick of death

But what captured him was a light in the river
folding open and open
blood, heart and stones
shimmering like the Milky Way.

And then it rained.
What went down sucked the current,
took hold.

Now southern California falls into the ocean.
Now Phoenix struggles under water.

Something has been let loose in the rain;
it is teaching us to love.

ANCHORAGE


This city is made of stone, of blood, and fish.
There are Chugatch Mountains to the east
and whale and seal to the west.
It hasn't always been this way, because glaciers
who are ice ghosts create oceans, carve earth
and shape this city here, by the sound.
They swim backwards in time.

Once a storm of boiling earth cracked open
the streets, threw open the town.
It's quiet now, but underneath the concrete
is the cooking earth,
and above that, air
which is another ocean, where spirits we can't see
are dancing joking getting full
on roasted caribou, and the praying
goes on, extends out.

Nora and I go walking down 4th Avenue
and know it is all happening.
On a park bench we see someone's Athabascan
grandmother, folded up, smelling like 200 years
of blood and piss, her eyes closed against some
unimagined darkness, where she is buried in an ache
in which nothing makes
sense.

We keep on breathing, walking, but softer now,
the clouds whirling in the air above us.
What can we say that would make us understand
better than we do already?
Except to speak of her home and claim her
as our own history, and know that our dreams
don't end here, two blocks away from the ocean
where our hearts still batter away at the muddy shore.

And I think of the 6th Avenue jail, of mostly Native
and Black men, where Henry told about being shot at
eight times outside a liquor store in L.A., but when
the car sped away he was surprised he was alive,
no bullet holes, man, and eight cartridges strewn
on the sidewalk
all around him.

Everyone laughed at the impossibility of it,
but also the truth. Because who would believe
the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival
those who were never meant
to survive?


THE BLACK ROOM


She thought she woke up.
Black willow shadows for walls
of her room. Was it sleep?
Or the star-dancer come for her dance?
There are stars who have names, who are
dreams. There are stars who have families
who are music. She thought she woke up.
Felt for skin, for alive and breathing blood
rhythm. For clothes or an earring she forgot to
take off. Could hear only the nerve
at the center of the bone--the gallop
of an elegant horse. She thought she woke
up. Black willow shadows for walls she
was younger then. Her grandmother's house
sloped up from the Illinois River in Oklahoma.
The house in summer motion of shadows breathed in cool
wind before rain rocked her. Storms were always
quick could take you in their violent hard rain
and hail. Gritty shingles of the rool. Rat
rat rat ratting and black willow branches twisting
and moaning and she lay there, the child that she was
in the dark in the motion. She thought she woke up.
Joey had her cornered. Leaned her up against the
wall of her room, in black willow shadows his breath
was shallow and muscled and she couldn't move and
she had no voice no name and she could only wait
until it was over--like violent summer storms
that she had been terrified of. She thought she
woke up. Maybe there were some rhythms that weren't
music; some signified small and horrible deaths
within her--and she rode them like horses into
star patterns of the northern hemisphere, and
into the west.


CUCHILLO


cuchillo
sky
is blood filling up my belly

cuchillo
moon
is a white horse thundering down
over the edge
of a raw red cliff

cuchillo
heart
is the one who leaves me
at midnight
for another lover

cuchillo
dog
is the noise of chains and collar
straining at the neck to bite
the smell of my ankles

cuchillo
silver
is the shell of black sky
spinning around inside
my darker eyes

cuchillo
dreams
are the living bones that want out
of this voice dangling
that calls itself
knife
(cuchillo).

All poems by Joy Harjo copyright © 1983, 1997 Thunder's Mouth Press.

[apaxicana]

Our people slit open the badger
to see the tomorrows
in its blood.
Now
look at me
and see what our
tomorrows hold

—Riding the One-Eyed Ford, Diane Burns, 1981


I am Tequila Mockingbird. Yes, I am related to Isaiah Mockingbird, and yes, I am that face in the moon on the cover of the Carson’s record album. And the Marshmallow beer girl, and that’s me on every stick of Land O’Lakes butter… I can trace my lineage back to the beginning of time when the world was nothing but a scrap of mud on the tip of a loon’s nose.

—Diane Burns, from her 1983 essay, Tequila Mockingbird


No one can tell you

ahead
of time
What
It’s like
To sweat & shake
& cold turkey
and be Afraid
to stay
awake and
Afraid
to
sleep
and
Afraid
to not do
either.

—Booze ’N’ Loozing Blues, Diane Burns, 1981

Poem
“
Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question?”

How do you do?
No, I am not Chinese.
No, not Spanish.
No, I am American Indi—uh, Native American.

No, not from India.
No, not Apache
No, not Navajo.
No, not Sioux.
No, we are not extinct.
Yes, Indian.

Oh?
So that’s where you got those high cheekbones.
Your great grandmother, huh?
An Indian Princess, huh?
Hair down to there?
Let me guess. Cherokee?

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian friend?
That close?

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian lover?
That tight?

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian servant?
That much?

Yeah, it was awful what you guys did to us.
It’s real decent of you to apologize.
No, I don’t know where you can get peyote.
No, I don’t know where you can get Navajo rugs real cheap.
No, I didn’t make this. I bought it at Bloomingdales.

Thank you. I like your hair too.
I don’t know if anyone knows whether or not Cher is really Indian.
No, I didn’t make it rain tonight.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Spirituality.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Spirituality. Uh-huh. Mother
Earth. Yeah. Uh’huh. Uh-huh. Spirituality.

No, I didn’t major in archery.
Yeah, a lot of us drink too much.
Some of us can’t drink enough.

This ain’t no stoic look.
This is my face.


Diane Burns (Lac Courte Oreilles- Cheemehuevi)
From:[e-mail] digest, issue 864

[apaxicana]

The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one

by June Jordan

well I wanted to braid my hair

bathe and bedeck my

self so fine

so fully aforethought for

your pleasure

see:

I wanted to travel and read

and runaround fantastic

into war and peace:

I wanted to

surf

dive

fly

climb

conquer

and be conquered

THEN

I wanted to pickup the phone

and find you asking me

if I might possibly be alone

some night

(so I could answer cool

as the jewels I would wear

on bareskin for you

digmedaddy delectation:)

"WHEN

you comin ova?"

But I had to remember to write down

margarine on the list

and shoepolish and a can of

sliced pineapple in casea company

and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's

gaining weight and don' nobody groove on

that much

girl

and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before

the laundry hit the water which I had

to kinda keep an eye on be-

cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that

Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs

and brain me with a mop don' smell too

nice even though she hang

it headfirst out the winda

and I had to check

on William like to

burn hisself to death with fever

boy so thin be

callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?"

"Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not

wake enough to sit beside him longer than

to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/

his shirt and feed him orange

juice before I fall out of sleep and

Sweet My Jesus ain but one can

left

and we not thru the afternoon

and now

you (temporarily) shownup with a thing

you says' a poem and you

call it

"Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"



guilty po' mouth

about duty beauties of my

headrag

boozeup doozies about

never mind

cause love is blind



well

I can't use it



and the very next bodacious Blackman

call me queen

because my life ain shit

because (in any case) he ain been here to share it

with me

(dish for dish and do for do and

dream for dream)

I'm gone scream him out my house

be-

cause what I wanted was

to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my

self so fully be-

cause what I wanted was

your love

not pity

be-

cause what I wanted was

your love

your love


From Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems by June Jordan, published by Thunder's Mouth Press. Copyright © 1989 June Jordan. Used with permission.


Poem for South African Women

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

from Passion: New Poems, 1977-80, by June Jordan
copyright 1980 June Jordan
reprinted with permission of the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust



POEM ABOUT PROCESS AND PROGRESS
for Haruko

Hey Baby you betta
hurry it up!
Because
since you went totally
off
I seen a full moon
I seen a half moon
I seen a quarter moon
I seen no moon whatsoever!

I seen a equinox
I seen a solstice
I seen Mars and Venus on a line
I seen a mess a fickle stars
and lately
I seen this new kind a luva
on an' off the telephone
who like to talk to me
all the time

real nice

© 1994 from Haruko/Love Poems (High Risk)


APRIL 7, 1999

Nothing is more cruel
than the soldiers who command
the widow
to be grateful
that she’s still alive



April 9, 1999
(for Ethelbert)

In Brooklyn when the flowering
forsythia escaped the concrete patterns
of tight winter days
I didn’t think about long
distances
or F-117s in contrast
to a lover or an army
on the ground
up close
and personal as washing out a shirt
by hand
the soapsuds and the fingers and the cloth
an ordinary ritual
to interdict the devils of 2,000 lb. bombs
dropped from more than 25,000 feet above
the children
scrambling from the schoolyard
suddenly aflame

until you called from Washington
D.C.
to say
"Oh, let me be
that shirt!"



APRIL 10, 1999

The enemies proliferate
by air
by land
they bomb the cities
they burn the earth
they force the families into miles and miles of violent exile

30 or 40 or 80,000 refugees
just before this
check-point
or who knows where
they disappear

the woman cannot find her brother
the man cannot recall the point of all
the papers somebody took
away from him
the rains fall to purify the river
the darkness does not slow the trembling
message of the tanks

Hundreds of houses on fire and still
the enemies do not seek and find
the enemies

only the ones without water
only the ones without bread
only the ones without guns

There is international TV
There is no news

The enemies proliferate
The homeless multiply
And I
I watch I wait

I am already far
and away
too late

too late

Copyright © 1999, June Jordan
Posted by permission of the poet
All rights reserved
(from The Progressive, June 1999)

[nandi]

May 14, 2007 11:16:59 GMT -5 stirred~UP said:

Alone

by Maya Angelou
- - - - - - - - - - - -


Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.


Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.


From Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well By Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1975 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted with permission of Random House, Inc. For online information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, visit the website at www.randomhouse.com.



so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski


if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or

fame,

don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don't do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,

don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.





if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.



if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you're not ready.



don't be like so many writers,

don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don't add to that.

don't do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don't do it.



when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.



there is no other way.



and there never was.


From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

LOVED BOTH OF THESE...ALSO LOVE LANGSTON HUGHES...I WILL HAVE TO FIND MY PIECE "QUESTION FOR LANGSTON AND LORRAINE AND POST IT"

[morethanmud]

leftysergeant left a video link to a piece he posted on youtube... nice work...
but one of the other featured videos in the sidebar was this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aTOojDHWfo&NR=1

a freestyle piece about lost love that u dont realize how personal it is until
about halfway thru...

[blueplanetii]

That was soo intense..I couldnt turn away and it was so personal..I felt like I should... Wow..Good looking out Mud..

[upfromsumdirt]

The Faithless Wife
by federico garcia lorca

So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.
The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.
Without silver light on their foliage
the trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she took off her dress.
I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.
Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.
That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.

[upfromsumdirt]

sista odilia (apaxi) left these presents in her myspace blog... i thankee sista...

a few pieces by brotha ishmael reed -


I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra

'The devil must be forced to reveal any such physical evil

(potions, charms, fetishes, etc.) still outside the body

and these must be burned.' (Rituale Romanum, published

1947, endorsed by the coat-of-arms and introductory

letter from Francis cardinal Spellman)


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra,

sidewinders in the saloons of fools

bit my forehead like O

the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists

who do not know their trips. Who was that

dog-faced man? they asked, the day I rode

from town.


School marms with halitosis cannot see

the Nefertiti fake chipped on the run by slick

germans, the hawk behind Sonny Rollins' head or

the ritual beard of his axe; a longhorn winding

its bells thru the Field of Reeds.


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. I bedded

down with Isis, Lady of the Boogaloo, dove

deep down in her horny, stuck up her Wells-Far-ago

in daring midday getaway. 'Start grabbing the

blue,' I said from top of my double crown.


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Ezzard Charles

of the Chisholm Trail. Took up the bass but they

blew off my thumb. Alchemist in ringmanship but a

sucker for the right cross.


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Vamoosed from

the temple i bide my time. The price on the wanted

poster was a-going down, outlaw alias copped my stance

and moody greenhorns were making me dance;

while my mouth's

shooting iron got its chambers jammed.


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Boning-up in

the ol' West i bide my time. You should see

me pick off these tin cans whippersnappers. I

write the motown long plays for the comeback of

Osiris. Make them up when stars stare at sleeping

steer out here near the campfire. Women arrive

on the backs of goats and throw themselves on

my Bowie.


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash,

the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and

Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do

the dirty boogie with scorpions. I make the bulls

keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste.


I am a cowboy in his boat. Pope Joan of the

Ptah Ra. C/mere a minute willya doll?

Be a good girl and

bring me my Buffalo horn of black powder

bring me my headdress of black feathers

bring me my bones of Ju-Ju snake

go get my eyelids of red paint.

Hand me my shadow


I'm going into town after Set


I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra


look out Set here i come Set

to get Set to sunset Set

to unseat Set to Set down Set


usurper of the Royal couch

imposter RAdio of Moses' bush

party pooper O hater of dance

vampire outlaw of the milky way




From New and Collected Poems by Ishmael Reed, published by Atheneum. Copyright © 1989 by Ishmael Reed. Reprinted by permission of Ishmael Reed. All rights reserved.



Jacket Notes

Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel

An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn't
The you can cut it

The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face

The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo

Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act

Amile from the drink
It begins to storm

But what really hurts is
You're bigger than the
Barrel



from Mumbo Jumbo

Look at them! Just look at them!
throwing their hips this way, that
way while I, my muscles, stone,
the marrow of my spine, plaster, my
back supported by decorated paper,
stand here as goofy as a Dumb Dora
Lord, if I can't dance, No one shall.



beware : do not read this poem

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman, so vain she
surrounded herself w /
many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house , but she was too
swift for them . she disappeared
into a mirror
each tenant who bought the house
after that , lost a loved one to

the ol woman in the mirror :
first a little girl
then a young woman
then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs

back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem . from
the waist down
nobody can hear you can they ?
this poem has had you up to here
belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w / this poem

move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic : the us bureau of missing persons re-
ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people
disappeared leaving no solid clues
nor trace only
a space in the lives of their friends

[nandi]

oh my! I am simply enamored with

BEWARE: DO NOT READ THIS POEM

what an innovative concept as well as a social commentary

very nicely done

[upfromsumdirt]

INVITATION
by shel silverstein

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some fla-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
come in!

[nandi]

didn't know where to put this/comment

love this piece by the admin
~~~~brushing the dust off of it~~~


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
prelude to a kiss ...rewrite...

it's called 'a kiss'...

the purpose is to pucker

and sucker you in

with my warm grin...

threading breaths into a common song. so

sing-a-long...

because a long love is like a gauze;

wrap it and my gaze around your heart.

yield.

baby, be healed. be unharmed.

'a kiss' is something nebulous/a celestialed charm. is

two circumferences of flesh/connecting wet,

orange and red and golden in hue...



'a kiss' is

a simple, single

circle of

life.



(i'll ask you for one, only twice... ...

... ... ...and then i'll beg a million times)

[nandi]

Jun 13, 2007 7:13:45 GMT -5 goddessoflight said:

Lucille Clifton...love this sisters work...posted an interview with her also...


Homage to My Hips


these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

oooh i love ov ov ov ove this!