EXCERPT

To John Donne

They say you are a man to value.
Generations have spoken praise of you.
I write to you in kind greeting
for you have written a poet's pen
sings with momentous voice.
Death has pride, John!
in the coal pitch blackness,
Death has pride, sir.
When you said,
"No man is an island,"
you were right.
We need human contact.
The touch called love
that blooms a soul like a rose.
I envied your life as you lived it.
The plague must have ripped
at the darkness and ignorance
of your countrymen to shreds.
My sympathy endures.
I know why you think death
Has no pride:
The soul cries, shrieks
from losing its identity.
The world it once knew,
falling under foot,
spirit collapsing, imploding
from madness within.
The heart's crumbling vessels
bleeding life's essence that
makes a man or woman whole.
The horror, sorrow, and pity a heart incurs.
It is a vast impurity that takes a mind
To restless, bitter sanity.
But how do you deal with the loss?
You don't.
It's an impossible task
left to wiser men
whose hearts are wiser still.
How can the mad be gentle
and still the countenance, of his woe?
Agape the sun and moon-
twist them until the dawn is black
and the dusk is white as day.
It is what I feel when I lose a loved one
I must say John I wish it no more.
I bid you good morrow,
and fond farewell.
I end an apprentice to your name,
and all you believe in.
May God watch over your countrymen
and let no pestilence, arise again.
Perhaps death has pride after all,
let him catch a star,
take his mad cows with him,
and let humanity be.

With Pen In Hand

I promised myself I wouldn't write
No words I put down will ever be
Literature or give voice where
Mere words could not offer profundity,
To the activist's mentality
Dwelling within my hands
Whose words is my very soul.

Surely within this poetic essay
To converse with reason
My contempt for my own humanity
I would like to take this time
To tender my resignation from
The human race.

Knowing the renderings this lyricon sings
Where my brothers and sisters
Have gone before me-
Baldwin, Hughes, Parks, Poe, Miller
Sweet Emily, Keats, Donne
Whose praise I would sing anytime
Jonson, Blake or a million authors
I consider my contemporaries
Someday I hope they acknowledge
Me too.

Perhaps when the rains have stopped
The butterflies & moths
Will harmonize on the cocoon tree of life
Discuss their differences with rational action
As my brothers of the
Human race have done
Or hopefully will do.

I will be there to tell their
Story perhaps worthy of
Praise if not as an historian,
On the cosmic imagination
That defines us all
I would have done my forefathers,
Service with satisfaction
My future ancestors can judge me then.

The Man Who Refused Destiny

I knew a man who refused destiny
shined shoes on a south town street corner
people drove by in their shiny cars
yelling derogatory comments
the man remained stoic and ignored them.
At night, he slept restless
his eyes carried sandbags of regret
and lost years
biding pipe dreams on white paper.
Dusting off his golden pen
wrote poetry for the gods
in his sleepless waning hours
lyrics poured from his heart
sweet, beautiful tender as grapes
his tears a fermented wine
distilled from a passion far beyond
comprehension from his lonely crying soul.
He wandered the city sometimes
drifting like Homer in the mornings.
Through bullet rainstorms, riots
fires that burned from the tenements
of people downtrodden and beaten
The sick, stricken, hungry men, women
and children looking for a friendly hand
to lift them from their squalor
they passed him by presuming
he was one of them.
He wrote of them in the still of his nights
writing them prayers, poems, and songs
worthy of blessings from the angels
quietly mourning their crumbling lives
and condemning the hypocrisies
that made them so.
Then prophesizing the day things changed.
His anger was like gasoline
Pouring on the pages he wrote.
His fire leaped from his golden pen
paper bombs exploded from his imagination
unleashing a storm upon his misbegotten city
inscribing declarations a historian would praise
from a book of history in some future tense.
Still, no one knew him or what he felt
except for a few.
The slam poets heard of him
some artisans heard of him too.
He seemed more a legend than a man
still he shined shoes, biding his time
among the populace of trusting and untrusting souls.
He would speak when the time was right
and all would know the man with the golden pen.

Wildcatting in Poet's Field

I sense the wellspring of the poet's madness
shaking ground, rumbling in gushers
emotion and passion spewing
raining words in a torrential downpour.

I can't take the pain anymore
I am poet here my cry-
roaring in the darkness to give light
where only blackness dwells.

I sense the danger of it all
they'll be dry wells too.
The bleak, parched white dust
soaking into my lungs.
I'll cry for a verbal glass of water
but no words will come.

They'll be times I'll hit again
maybe only a barrel or two
to quench the days and live
on a nickel's worth of peace
and embrace the reckoning like a loving cup
I'll be satisfied and fulfilled.

They'll be other poets who will come
will wildcat, and work their souls to skeletal remains
bargaining their hearts for a few pipes and steel
to build derricks on shaky grounds
fight against hard weather and cold dark winds.

They'll ask me for advice and what I went through
you never lose the feeling.
A poet man is another kind of being
always drilling, always dwelling, never satisfied.

A muse working on a late night shift hauling freight
pumping out venacularities in a pipeline
looking for a little comfort come breakfast-eating time.
Morning is just another word for a cold rhyme
with coffee on the side.