These are calamitous times we’re living through
you can’t speak without committing a contradiction
or keep quiet without complicity with the Pentagon.
Everyone knows there’s no alternative possible
all roads lead to Cuba
but the air is dirty
breathing is a futile act.
The enemy says
the country is to blame
as if countries were men.
Accursed clouds circle accursed volcanos
accursed embarkations launch accursed expeditions
accursed trees crumble on accursed birds:
it was all polluted to begin with.
“Diary [The First Seed]” – Rachel Zucker
He gives me the wedding band of the real world
a story with pockets and mirrors
woos me with music that could kill insects
its frequency
reveals men in the distance forging the bridge
between nether and either
when night sets, the stones return to the earth
and in the morning, work again:
swimming through chaos to find the world
From Eating in the Underworld. Copyright © 2003 Rachel Zucker.
“Anthracite” – Saeed Jones
A voice mistook for stone,
jagged black fist
thrown miles through space, through
doors of dark matter.
Heard you crack open the field’s skull
where you landed.
Halo of smoke ruined the sky
and you were a body now
naked and bruised in the cratered cotton.
Could have been a meteorite
except for those strip-mined eyes, each
a point of fossilized night.
Bringing water and a blanket,
I asked, “Which of your lives is this,
third or fifth?” Your answer, blues
a breeze to soak my clothes
in tears. With my palm pressed
to your lips, hush. When they hear
you, they will want you. Beware
of how they want you;
in this town everything born black
also burns.
From Prelude to Bruise. Copyright © 2014 Saeed Jones.
Sigmund Freud Said
Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.
“why some people be mad at me sometimes” – Lucille Clifton
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine
Malcolm X Said
“Education is the passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” – Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
“Door in the Mountain” – Jean Valentine
Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars
I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders
deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest
People are not wanting
to let me in
Door in the mountain
let me in
C.S. Lewis Said
“We read to know that we are not alone.”
James Baldwin said (2)
“I read everything. I read my way out of the two libraries in Harlem by the time I was thirteen. One does learn a great deal about writing this way. First of all, you learn how little you know. It is true that the more one learns the less one knows. I’m still learning how to write. I don’t know what technique is. All I know is that you have to make the reader see it. This I learned from Dostoyevsky, from Balzac.”