He is not the one
and yet I love him
inordinately.
His virginity was mine
and so is his oldest child.
He is America
and I vacillate
between love
and a frustration
that wants to lodge
in hate but can’t
because I grew
up in him.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Poetically speaking, growing up is mediocrity
– Ned Rorem
Neither rosy nor prim
not cousin to the cowslip
nor the extravagant fuchsia-
I doubt anyone has ever
picked one for show,
though the woods must be fringed
with their lemony effusions.
Sun blathers its baronial
endorsement, but they refuse
to join the ranks. Summer
brings them in armfuls,
yet, when the day is large,
you won’t see them fluttering
the length of the road.
They’ll wait until the world’s
tucked in and the sky’s
one ceaseless shimmer-then
lift their saturated eyelids
and blaze, blaze
all night long
for no one.
Excerpted from Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
She cried me a river
which I populated
with salmon.
She then fished
up my nose
for coke fiend
dreams
to tell her
unstoried friends
but I was unpowdered
like puff the magic dragon.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Then after Eden,
was there one surprise?
O yes, the awe of Adam
at the first bead of sweat.
Thenceforth, all flesh
had to be sown with salt,
to feel the edge of seasons,
fear and harvest
joy that was difficult,
but was, at least, his own.
The snake? It would not trust
on its forked tree.
The snake admired Labour,
it would not leave him alone.
And both would watch the leaves
silver the alder,
oaks yellowing October,
everything turning money.
So when Adam was exiled
to our new Eden, in the ark’s gut,
the coined snake coiled there for good
fellowship also; that was willed.
Adam had an idea.
He and the snake would share
the loss of Eden for a profit.
So both made the New World. And it looked good.
Excerpted from Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984
Then after Eden,
was there one surprise?
O yes, the awe of Adam
at the first bead of sweat.
Thenceforth, all flesh
had to be sown with salt,
to feel the edge of seasons,
fear and harvest
joy that was difficult,
but was, at least, his own.
The snake? It would not trust
on its forked tree.
The snake admired Labour,
it would not leave him alone.
And both would watch the leaves
silver the alder,
oaks yellowing October,
everything turning money.
So when Adam was exiled
to our new Eden, in the ark’s gut,
the coined snake coiled there for good
fellowship also; that was willed.
Adam had an idea.
He and the snake would share
the loss of Eden for a profit.
So both made the New World. And it looked good.
Excerpted from Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984
Before 16 bars imprisoned words,
before rhymes were as predictable
as a cop’s nightstick upside your head,
my pen positioned itself
in the continuum of black words.
Shaka Zulu and Uhuru
are the main threads of my weave
so there’s no need for me to loom
larger than sacred life.
I’ll leave that to you and you and you
while my words through the needle go
attempting to be part of the quilt
reconnecting the unraveled threads of black life.
I’m not a superstar.
I’m just a star shining alongside my fellow stars.
Together, we illuminate what’s right
and I like it like that.
So you and you and you
can keep on masturbating to finger snaps
while I read Ngugi
trying to decolonize my mind
so that my words can turn into wombs
breeding the fire next time.
Excerpted from my book, Still Living on my Feet
The ONE poem I have, deliberately, withheld from publishing (in my books) because one day, I want to devote a whole book to the “concern” and donate all proceeds to an anti-rape organization yet to be determined.
Sugar Blues
My almost thirteen year old self was more overwhelmed
by the endless mug shots of black boys and men
than by the reason I was sitting at the cop’s desk
looking through myriad pictures
trying to pick out the one
who stole my virginity.
Under pressure, I finally picked out one
who looked similar enough.
How glad I was, during the trial,
that his teacher verified his whereabouts.
Decades later, the subject came up again
and it came to my attention that I wasn’t the only one.
It wasn’t only my shame, wasn’t only my affliction.
It was a community epidemic
that it had its source in hatred of the feminine;
whether young or old, virgin or whore.
So I can’t act like I don’t know
or treat it like some feminine malady
that has nothing to do with me.
I gotta be real, not divorce myself.
I saw an actor in a film say
women are the sweetness of life
but somewhere along the way
sugar blues has taken up residence.
We got diabetic rapists, saccharin pedophiles
and just plain glucose driven men.
So this is a call to action.
If you bout it, bout it
if you’re truly about revolution
truly about change
you need to step up to the plate
and recognize the rigged game
that has us all, men as well as women
losing our sense of community,
our sense of ourselves.
I read this beautiful poem by S.J. Mallory on Goodreads and requested his permission to post it here. If you agree with me on its beauty, please visit his website. Enjoy!
Alphabet Orchestra
The writer’s quest is to put into words
the burnished wonderment of a violin.
For his pencil to carve his lines on a blank page
like a bow cutting across tightly stretched guts.
Quietly making music that vibrates with dreams and regrets
and the timeless joy of the moment.
An alphabet orchestra
whose beauty is found only under a humble
chin.
La Guerre
V
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,had the haughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty ,how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffetting thee that thou mightiest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
La Guerre
IV
little ladies more
than dead exactly dance
in my head,precisely
dance where danced la guerre.
Mimi à
la voix fragile
qui chatouille Des
Italiens
the putain with the ivory throat
Marie Louise Lallemand
n’est-ce pas que je suis belle
chéri? les anglais m’aiment
tous,les américains
aussi…”bon dos, bon cul de Paris”(Marie
Vierge
Priez
Pour
Nous)
with the
long lips of
Lucienne which dangle
the old men and hot
men se promènent
doucement le soir(ladies
accurately dead les anglais
sont gentils et les américains
aussi,ils payent bien les américains dance
exactly in my brain voulez-
vous coucher avec
moi? Non? pourquoi?)
ladies skillfully
dead precisely dance
where has danced la
guerre j’m’appelle
Manon,cinq rue Henri Monnier
voulez-vous coucher avec moi?
te ferai Mimi
te ferai Minette
dead exacgtly dance
si vous voulez
chatouiller
mon lézard ladies suddenly
j’m’en fous des nègres
(in the twilight of Paris
Marie Louise with queenly
legs cinq rue Henri
Monnier a little love
begs,Mimi with the body
like une boîte a joujoux,want nice sleep?
toutes les petites femmes exactes
qui dansent toujours in my
head dis-donc,Paris
ta gorge mystérieuse
pourquoi se promène-t-elle,pourquoi
éclate to voix
fragile couleur de pivoine?)
with the
long lips of Lucienne which
dangle the old men and hot men
precisely dance in my head
ladies carefully dead
Tichaona Chinyelu 
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