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.
My heart with desire tense, I knew: naught
But this blue eve of bloody stars, of wounds
Raw—the sighs of one who is oft distraught—
Could this, my manic body, maroon
Where brave souls go to find the bliss they sought;
America, how I thought I knew thee well!
Land of the West, of golden gleaming hope,
Of the People’s answer to Dante’s hell;
We who with freedom and slavery cope.
Do not be fooled by the fool,
The man who flaunts and struts,
Whose words are empty but cruel
Like the waiting grave a genocide abuts.
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – Shakespeare
The power of fire is not that it burns
But that it distracts:
We save what burns because it burns.
Throughout my adult life I have, time and again, tried to answer the following question: how much could I accomplish, how much could I experience, were I to not waste so much time and instead discipline and channel my energy […]
Almost any debate about the need for improvements to America’s public education system, k-12 as well as community college and university, will include a comment along the lines of, “We need to do a better job of preparing our young […]