LET'S GET REAL

There are no more jokes to life.
WE are FALLING as a RACE and we should be ASHAMED in ourselves
Violence is erupting in our streets
Innocent people are dying
Yet instead of mourning over the lost we are being ignorant
The foolishness needs to stop!
All we are doing is PROVING THE WHITE MAN RIGHT
Proving that we cannot be civilized, that we belong in shackles being whooped in cotton fields
Our ancestors would not be proud if they saw what we are doing today
In fact they would turn their heads and bow them in disgust
Thinking to themselves all that hard work for nothing
Is that really  what we want...history to repeat itself all over again
For us the black race to be treated like animals
To be treated as if we are inferior to dirt the other races step on
If that is what you really seek then continue
But if not...
Stop the meaningless violence

The little boy stood up
and dusted the chalk from his knees and wrists
and he admired the drawing on the pavement.
Chalk dust had smeared and danced in the wind
while he looked at his tree and the blue sky behind it.
When another boy, a bigger one rode by
and let his bicycle tire cut through the center.
The boy laughed at the little one
and the little one cried.

The boy drew with careful concentration
and Crayola crayon gripped tightly in his small hand
while he colored in a coloring book to make the unnatural possible.
Another girl laughed and tore his page out
saying that pigs weren’t blue and grass isn’t orange.
Everyone snickered and pointed
and the little boy snatched it back and tossed it into his backpack,
ashamed.

The teenage boy painted carefully across his canvas
and let the blue paint drip like pieces of the sky
as he created the ocean waves and swells
and his classmates laughed at him because he wanted to paint
and not play games and the boy had stopped caring,
had stopped hearing the laughter.

The man hung his canvas on the wall
of a fine and elegant gallery
and people came and stared in awe at his creations
and no one laughed or pointed
and he didn’t feel ashamed.
He only heard praise
and now he was laughing.

Away into the future in days we don’t know
Lived a girl with her dear mother’s wife
And abandoned traditions of decades ago
Made no impact on their joinéd life

The profane was normal and it was expected
That gender give no weight to love
And long dead protesters long since had defected
Though they lose peace long sought from above

But this girl was among those chagrined by their fate
Doomed to carouse in shades of grey
For no matter the forward evolution’ry prate
This upon her good conscience would weigh:

She cared not for caresses of sexes together
But feigned the feeling for fear of misuse
Resignéd to normalcy’s smothering tether
For her one-sided view was to others obtuse

They did not comprehend that her dead eyes did gaze
Upon silhouette man for whom her slow heart beat
And sat quietly she for a number of days
With contemplative question, enamor discreet

‘Till her lips formed the answer with truth late in coming
With sentences all but forbidden
Breaking the chains of society’s numbing
Sympathies quoted unhinged, unhidden

A love once forbidden by color of skin
A love once forsaken for money or pleasure
No more to be bound by the horror of sin
She opened to her mouth to declare without measure:

Affection is lessened by norm that encumbers
To love someone mirroring their ways with thine
It may disgrace you that I do not count in your numbers
I’m in love with a differing gender from mine

And lo that day not a jest was utter’d
To the maiden now soaring with spirit unshuttered.

There are many paths to take in life
But I beg of you all
Choose love.

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.  I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
    As far as Cho-fu-sa.