A Love Letter Written for Sterling Brown-Sonia Sanchez

(after reading a New York Times article re a mummy kept preserved for about 300 years)

I’m gonna get me some mummy tape for your love

preserve it for 3000 years or more

I’m gonna let the world see you

tapping a blue shell dance of love

I’m gonna ride your love bareback

on totem poles

bear your image on mountains

turning in ocean sleep

string your sighs thru the rainbow

of old age.

In the midst of desert people and times

I’m gonna fly your red/eagle/laughter ‘cross the sky.

From the Heart

This was really hard for me to write. Words come so easily for me usually but this one was different. I prayed for the words, I doubted myself and I needed feedback from others. I don’t typically write rhyming poems but this one seemed to need it.

You came to us with that smile and those eyes

And for us you were always a prize

A gift, a treasure

You loved us all without measure

A heart so large and grand

Always willing to lend a hand

If needed, you were there whenever…

And we will miss you forever

Double Posts

While working to get a new post up, I’m posting from my phone and there seems to be a problem. Possibly because I haven’t updated the app. Due to some snafu with the site, several posts that should have previously appeared were published today. Some of them appear twice. Please disregard them if you’ve previously read them. If they’re new to you, enjoy.

The Hardest Goodbye I Never Said

The hardest goodbye I never said

Won’t kill this pain in my heart and head

Love you forever lil red.

Who Said It Was Simple-Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger

that sometimes the branches shatter

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march

discussing the problematic girls

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes

a waiting brother to serve them first

and the ladies neither notice nor reject

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.

But I who am bound by my mirror

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering

which me will survive

all these liberations.

The Bait-John Donne

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will some new pleasures prove

Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run

Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;

And there the ‘enamour’d fish will stay,

Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,

Each fish, which every channel hath,

Will amorously to thee swim,

Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,

By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,

And if myself have leave to see,

I need not their light having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,

And cut their legs with shells and weeds,

Or treacherously poor fish beset,

With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest

The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;

Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,

Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,

For thou thyself art thine own bait:

That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,

Alas, is wiser far than I.

Lipstick and Legs

Leaving traces behind as I coat your copper coated skin

Bracing myself for the aftermath of afternoons spent

Drenched in sweat, covered in love marks, looks of love faces, and satiated by sheet covered memories

All conjured by shaking legs on the side of the bed and hints of mented’s Foxy Brown Matte

Who Said It Was Simple-Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger

that sometimes the branches shatter

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march

discussing the problematic girls

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes

a waiting brother to serve them first

and the ladies neither notice nor reject

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.

But I who am bound by my mirror

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering

which me will survive

all these liberations.

Long, too long America- Walt Whitman

Long, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse really are?)