Something to say #1

It's not the sound
It's the booming
Of my heart.
That's what I miss

a note to my darkness

i was me before me and after me i was me so naturally i be two. blue black beings beaming at the same time."

With No Immediate Cause by Ntozake Shange

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a lil girl is molested
yet i rode the subway today
i sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his
daughter but i sat there
cuz the young men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
i might not shut my door fast
every 3 minutes it happens
some woman’s innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red & split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body
i rode the subway today
& bought a paper from a
man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/i don’t know
maybe he catches lil girls in the
park & rips open their behinds
with steel rods/i can’t decide
what he might have done i only
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so
i bought the paper
looking for the announcement
the discovery/of the dismembered
woman’s body/the
victims have not all been
identified/today they are
naked and dead/refuse to
testify/one girl out of 10′s not
coherent/i took the coffee
& spit it up/i found an
announcement/not the woman’s
bloated body in the river/floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/not the baby
broken on the floor/
there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands & lovers with no
immediate cause”

i spit up i vomit i am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women’s bodies are found
in alleys & bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before i ride the subway/buy a paper/drink
coffee/i must know/
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child across a room
are the lil girl’s panties
in yr pocket

did you hurt a woman today
i have to ask these obscene questions
the authorities require me to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day

bathroom poetry

my body is a jerk
i wish i had a beak
so i cld gnaw at my hand
@strange matter

Toni Morrison

-Toni Morrison on her motivation for writing

Hafiz (1315-1390)

"God / And I have become / Like two giant fat people / Living in a / Tiny boat. / We / Keep / Bumping into each other and / L a u g h i n g"08/01
— Hafiz (1315-1390)

Translating poetry

“Translating poetry is like making jewelry. Every word counts, and each sparkles with so many facets. Translating prose is like sculpting: get the shape and the lines right, then polish the seams later.” James Nolan

Verb

I’m going to wrinkle this word,
I’m going to twist it,
yes,
it is much too flat
it is as if a great dog or great river
had passed its tongue or water over it
during many years.

I want that in the word
the roughness is seen
the iron salt
The de-fanged strength
of the land,
the blood
of those who have spoken and those who have not spoken.

I want to see the thirst
Inside the syllables
I want to touch the fire
in the sound:
I want to feel the darkness
of the cry. I want
words as rough
as virgin rocks.


PABLO NERUDA

Haiku

Silence. crystals. cornbread
and greens laughter. brocades.
The sea. Beethoven. Coltrane.
Spring and winter. blue rivers.
Dreadlocks. blues. a waterfall.
Empty mountains. bamboo. bodegas.
Ancient generals. dreams. lamps.
Sarah Vaughn. Her voice exploding
in the universe, returning to earth
in prayer. Plum blossoms.
Silk and steel. Cante jondo
Wine. hills. flesh. perfume.
A breath inhaled and held.
Silence.

Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

love poems

this is the first draft cover for the set of love poems i did a long time ago. by mars 5. soon to be released asap!

can we talk?

sometimes i wanna punch the way we communicate right in the face.
so many things left unsaid because of this and that.
..so this is a freestyle poem on the lack of..

my thoughts return to you
my lungs return back to the coal mine

Muta Baruka performs on Def Poetry Jam

Good Morning Sex

Good Morning Sex
Good Morning, sex. How do you do?
Tell me how life’s been treating you.
You say what? Sex is and sex ain’t
sex wuz and sex wuzn’t
sex should be and sex has been
on Time Square billboards
on television, in the movies,
in the lyrics dripping off pouting lips.
You say sex is in the drinks we drink
the laughs we laugh
the walk we walk
the smells we smell as we open
our eyes and legs and let the funk spread.
You say sex is dark basements
lights turned out, bodies turned on.
Sex is a breakfast table full of
leftover wine and smiles.
Sex is kinky & clean shaven
sex is straight & gay
sex is do it anyway.
Comes in twos and threes.
Comes on time. Late.
Sex is love. Unlove.
Comes with danger & beauty
Comes in clean and shadowy places.
Sex is life. Death. A gig.
Sometimes you need it in the
Morning. Afternoon. Evening.
Sometimes it satisfies; sometimes it don’t
sometimes you feel it in yo’ armpits
sometimes you feel it in the mind,
but ah, ahhh, when it comes
this sex, when it appears
buck naked and clothed,
when it comes Thelonious Monk-like jazzy,
when it comes hip hopping like the nite
ain’t like no other nite; ya
know what time it is, what day
it is, what month it is, what year
it is. When it comes RIGHT, you
understand that sex is & sometimes it ain’t
But when it is…

Sonia Sanchez

INNOCENT ENTITIES

The birds, the leaves,
the autumn - isn’t it
the time to lose things?

-Dimitar Stefanov

It is obvious that we are inter-are.

You Are Me You are me and I am you.

It is obvious that we are inter-are.

You cultivate the flower in yourself so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself so that you do not have to suffer.

I support you you support me.

I am here to bring you peace you are here to bring me joy.



Thich Naht Hahn

Fresh Zombies by Amiri Baraka

Fresh Zombies

OK Shuffles. Stink in neon
Lie in lights. Betray before millions
Assassinate w/ slogans. Not old toms
but New Toms, Double Toms
A Tom Tom Macoute. Fresh Zombies.
House Nigger maniacs. Oreo serial killers
That thumping, that horrible sound,
is not music, not drums, but shuffling
Not old toms, New Toms, Double Toms
A Tom Tom Macoute. Fresh Zombies

Balboa, the Entertainer by Amiri Baraka

Balboa, the Entertainer

It cannot come
except you make it
from materials
it is not
caught from. (The philosophers
of need, of which
I am lately
one,
will tell you. ``The People,''
(and not think themselves
liable
to the same
trembling flesh). I say now, ``The People,
as some lesson repeated, now,
the lights are off, to myself,
as a lover, or at the cold wind.

Let my poems be a graph
of me. (And they keep
to the line where flesh
drops off. You will go
blank at the middle. A
dead man.

But
die soon, Love. If
what you have for
yourself, does not
stretch to your body's
end.
(Where, without
preface,
music trails, or your fingers
slip
from my arm

Pablo Neruda

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

Khalil Gibran

“And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretching forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.” — The Prophet

Jim Carroll (August 1, 1949 - September 11, 2009)

Its color is violet, like lips
that have been smashed by night
or robbed of blood by lack of breath.
The wind I was speaking of does this.

I can feel it now.

- Jim Carroll (August 1, 1949 - September 11, 2009)