“Would you break the law then pay a fine
If it helped the bottom line?”
“Yes,” says the CEO, “this job is mine
So long as I grow the bottom line.”
America was born mulatto, stillborn
But for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
Aphorisms written in blood with hands trembling,
Terrified of the dark engine that drove
The clouds roll in on rails
Freighted with storms headed West,
A great chain of color clanking
Across the sky, a mass of iron
There is something to be said for purpose,
Is there not?
The lilac tempts the bee,
The politician seeks the voters’ approbation,
The poet pursues greatness;
We embrace like rough hot stone slid against rough hot stone,
The space between us vanishing, a horizon in lifting fog,
The back-and-forth sway of stomach in breath a ship that
Approaches then recedes from the dock,
Each approach staccato with the hum of two engines
Dying in our chests: put-put-put, they seek to anchor
In my garden I have sought to wrest from nature
what’s untamable in both of us.
What grows here, grows because I have knelt
in the dirt, have spread seeds, have weeded and pruned.
I will bury you in poems,
The words like leaves
Cascading around you,
Drip, drip, drip until
You and the moss
Are indistinguishable.
Being a poet, and writing poetry, requires that one be capable of touching the taut, electric rope that connects the valleys and hills of Earth with the horizons and vastness of sky and space, and that one do so without recoiling from the pain or being overwhelmed by the view.
I am monastic, yes, but not a monk—
Austere, ascetic, I abstain from drink
Yet, sloshing blood, my heart, engorged and drunk,
Trembles like a pen that spills carnal ink;
See how I slur my words? The Book beckons
But the night seduces with pages soaked
Think of a moment in time,
See it happen and then pass,
Rewind it, speed it up and slow it down,
Turn it in your hands like a jewel
Or a relic,
Observe it through the stained glass
Of a microscope or a Church window,
Taste it with the tongue of memory—
The jasmine and vinegar
That fill to brimming the vase of history.
I am the Founder & CEO of Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit social venture seeking to tackle poverty through financial services. I am also a writer, poet, cyclist, and avid reader. Enjoy my blog!