Check The Diagonal

Poem for Sunday

and for my daughter, and her two friends who will hopefully take the lesson away from the mistake.

do not be afraid of no

“Do not be afraid of no,
Who has so very far to go”:

New caution to occur
To one whose inner scream set her to cede, for softer lapping and smooth fur!

Whose esoteric need
Was merely to avoid the nettle, to not-bleed.

Stupid, like a street
That beats into a dead end and dies there, with nothing left to reprimand or meet.

And like a candle fixed
Against dismay and countershine of mixed

Wild moon and sun. And like
A flying furniture, or bird with lattice wing; or gaunt thing, a-stammer down a nightmare neon peopled with condor, hawk and shrike.

To say yes is to die.
A lot or a little. The dead wear capably their wry

Enabled emblems. They smell.
But that and that they do not altogether yell is all that we know well.

It is brave to be involved,
To be not fearful to be unresolved.

Her new wish was to smile
When answers took no airships, walked a while.

Gwendolyn Brooks

A Poem for Sunday

Yesterday marked the day that Dominicans celebrate as the day their country was freed from Haitian rule and became independent.  This poem is in honor of La Trinitaria, because it is important to remember a story of three men, Juan Pablo Duarte, Ramon Matias Mella, and Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, who inspired their country to become free.  “We are the change we’ve been waiting for” wasn’t a campaign slogan to win an election, it was wake up call to rescue a country.  While the NAACP and other so called leadership organizations opt to play along to get along, the crisis for the working poor and minorities in this country grows worse every day.  Where we at? 

You Who Sleep Soundly Through Our Bleakest Hour

You who sleep soundly through our bleakest hour,
who hear the meekest cry, and turn away,
who ride the river, blessing it with power
to cancel what we've made day by slow day;
You whom we cannot know nor flee, who hide
behind your countless aliases, who bear
the weapon of your absence like a tide
against our helplessness, and fail to care;
You who stand by while madness picks the lock,
stroke cuts the wires, tumor rigs the mine:
Look how we scour the earth to find--in rock,
in fire, in word--your signature, some sign
of you in thought that quarrels with your will,
and as it quarrels, hungers for you still.

-Rhina Espaillat

Just Nothing

I had this re-launch of me all mapped out.  It took long enough.  I have so many different versions of what I was going to say, all long winded and elaborate.  It was going to be full of autobiography and cleverness so that people who came here by accident could understand where I come from and stay.  It was going to be wrapped in old school hip-hop and urban myths explaining why my particular ghetto is better than any other ghetto.  At one point I think LL was even gonna remind folks not to call it a comeback.  And then I heard Joe Unger died.  He was a 41 year old father of five in the best shape of his life and he died of a heart attack.  Big Joe was the biggest kid in my JHS class at 187 and I was the smallest and he was my friend.  And in missing the man I never got to know Big Joe to be I just can’t bring myself to write the look at how unique I am post that I was planning and instead am just going to continue my experience here the way I started it.

A Poem for Sunday- RIP Lucile Clifton

The whole site design thing is taking a little longer than I anticipated.  I feel like I should say that since this feels like having guests over for dinner and I forgot to tidy up.

This is the poem that most connects me to Lucile Clifton-those same somethings have failed here too.  R.I.P wonderful, wonderful woman.

 

Also, Stacia Brown reposted a wonderful tribute peice she wrote last December here.

A Poem for Sunday

and for Sarah Palin and her Tea Party revelers who attempt to co-op the revolution of change that belongs to my children in the name of a white God that does not love them.

Enemy

It would be nice
In any case,
To someday meet you
Face to face
Walking down
The road to hell...
As I come up
Feeling swell.

Langston Hughes

Poem for the New Year.

From a Facebook friend:

We will open the book. Its pages are blank.

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

 

-Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Poem for Sunday

And for the people of Iran.

Patriotism
Breathes there the man with soul so dead,   Who never to himself hath said,     'This is my own, my native land!'   Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd   As home his footsteps he hath turn'd   From wandering on a foreign strand?   If such there breathe, go, mark him well;   For him no Minstrel raptures swell;   High though his titles, proud his name,   Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf,   The wretch, concentred all in self,   Living, shall forfeit fair renown,   And, doubly dying, shall go down   To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Sir Walter Scott

Letting go.

The picture is of Billy Graham, one of a select group of people who stepped up to be my village, when I needed it most, and raised the child. 

“Up to a point a man's life is

shaped by environment,

heredity and movement and

changes in the world about him;

then there comes a time when it

lies within his grasp to shape the

clay of his life into the sort of

thing he wishes to be.

Only the weak blame parents,

their race, their times, lack of

good fortune, or the quirks of

fate.

Everyone has it within his

power to say this I am today,

that I shall be tomorrow. The

wish, however, must be

implemented by deeds.”

Louis L’Amour

Billy was the only cowboy I ever knew and Louis L’Amour was his favorite writer.

 

  

Poem for Sunday

Birthday of but a single pang

 

Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come --
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom --

 

Emily Dickinson

Poem for Sunday-For a fallen friend

Life has two days:  One peace, one wariness,

And has two sides: worry and happiness.

Ask him who taunts us with adversity,

“Does fate, save those worthy of note, oppress?

Don’t you see that the blowing, raging storms

Only the tallest of the trees beset,

And of earth’s many green and barren lots,

Only the one with fruits with stones are hit,

And of the countless stars in heaven’s vault

None is eclipsed except the moon and the sun?

You thought well of the days, when they were good,

Oblivious to the ills destined for one.

You were deluded by the peaceful nights,

Yet in the peace of night does the sorrow stun.”

 

- The 1001 Nights

Poem for Sunday

for my children, growing up interracial in a South that won't accept them.   The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.

The South

The lazy, laughing South

With blood on its mouth.

The sunny-faced South,

    Beast-strong,

    Idiot-brained.

The child-minded South

Scratching in the dead fire's ashes

For a Negro's bones.

    Cotton and the moon,

    Warmth, earth, warmth,

    The sky, the sun, the stars,

    The magnolia-scented South.

Beautiful, like a woman,

Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,

    Passionate, cruel,

    Honey-lipped, syphilitic--

    That is the South.

And I, who am black, would love her

But she spits in my face.

And I, who am black,

Would give her many rare gifts

But she turns her back upon me.

    So now I seek the North--

    The cold-faced North,

    For she, they say,

    Is a kinder mistress,

And in her house my children

May escape the spell of the South.

-Langston Hughes

Poem for Sunday

and in light of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize award...

PRAYERS FOR THE EARTH

For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language
Let's stop for one second and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines.
We would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales
And the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire,
Victory with no survivors
Would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers
    in the shade doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity,
Life is what it is about.
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single minded about keeping our lives moving,
And for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never
    understanding ourselves
And of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us when everything seems dead
    and later proves to be alive.
-Pablo Neruda

Poem for Sunday

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

-William Wordsworth

Poem for Sunday

I am sad that I can find little reason for the insane protests and fury from the right other than race.

THEME FOR ENGLISH B by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1951

Poem for 9/11

Never forget those who died on 9/11/01 or how their memory was used to fuel the unnecessary war in Iraq.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-Wilfred Owen

Against the potent poison of your hate.

Your door is shut against my tightened face,

And I am sharp as steel with discontent;

But I possess the courage and the grace

To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,

A chafing savage, down the decent street;

And passion rends my vitals as I pass,

Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.

Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,

Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,

And find in it the superhuman power

To hold me to the letter of your law!

Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate

Against the potent poison of your hate.

Claude McKay- The White House

Summer Recess

Written on a Summer Evening

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crowned.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,—
That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go
Into oblivion—that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.

-John Keats

Poem for Friday

Sometimes I get discouraged I look around and, things are so weak People are so weak Sometimes, Sometimes I feel like crying Sometimes my heart gets heavy Sometimes I just want to leave and fly away Sometimes I dont know what to do with myself Passion takes over me I feel like a man Going insane Losing my brain Trying to maintain Doing my thang Mos Def- Umi Says

A Poem for Monday

The Book of Genesis According to St. Miguelito

On the fourth day God was riding around Harlem in a gypsy cab when he created the people and he created these beings in ethnic proportion but he saw the people lonely & hungry and from his eminent rectum he created a companion for these people and he called this companion capitalism who begat racism who begat exploitation who begat male chauvinism who begat machismo who begat imperialism who begat colonialism who begat wall street who begat foreign wars and God knew and God saw and God felt this was extra good and God said VAYAAAAAAA -Miguel Pinero