Do you still hope for your school days
when a smoke was just for laughs
and sweet heart  pledges were written in chalk
and picket fences kept the sheep
away from the cabbage patch the teachers carefully planted

Life's not so bad
until just before morning
when I see a dark man
driving a black Cadillac
take a cigarette from his lips
and throw it out the window
watching it go all to pieces
all over the road.

Family Secret

An Ice-cream man, with an Ice-cream van
His melodic chimes seem magical  and enchanting
the heat waves, a major summer killer

Little children with happy faces make biblical verses
Jump off the pages and come alive
Block to blocks, street to streets
laughter could be heard for miles

 There he was sitting on the old stoop
A little freckle face boy.
with eyes of a deep, dark blue
Waiting for God to answer his pray

Poor, little Vincent Maloney

He remember his grandmother harsh words
"Wipe your tears away, and pray in silent
Young Vincent Maloney"

“I pity your mother and I pity her choices,
and most all I pity her
For eloping with the colored man
 Barbara Coleman husband

Wipe your nose, and weep no more
Your daddy ain't your daddy
But your daddy doesn’t know

.
Race is not a determinable concept my child.

Here the horse munches the grass
little knowing the trots of yore
for time when lays the bricks with curse
unhinges the strongest door.

Here the horse is tethered to feed
little hearing the neighs of past
for time when crumbles sows a seed
grows new order from soil of dust.

Here the horse lazes in sun
little seeing the shadow's growth
for time when ends a period's run
buries in the walls a lover's oath.

Here the horse walks in a round
little feeling the earth's spin
for time when shrinks the highest to ground
kingdoms fall in heaps of ruin.

It had happened so long ago
None now there could recall
How or why the helmets and armor
Lay at the bottom of the shallow sea

Like clockwork at dusk
Such relics would wash ashore
Battered, rusted and torn
To lay on the white sand beach

The children of the nearby village
Loved to pick the prettiest pieces
And bring them back as souvenirs
To decorate their little huts

The adults of the village didn't mind
But they were warry of certain obiects
Namely the black boxes and drums
Full of pointed or rounded cylinders

Years ago thinking it to be junk
A villager threw one such box in a fire
The result sounded like a great host
Of lightning striking over and over

Some of the villagers thought
The boxes could be used to make fire
But none of them yet have deciphered
How the strange objects work

No, for the most they are content
Living in their riverside village
Happy and oblivious
That the world ended long ago

Before I started draining parts of me
onto this page
I couldn't see for the clearest of paths,
I would dwell,
Hide away in my own safe house
Of saturated stories.

I would scratch my head catching gravity
between my fingertips.
A color would be a rainbow in black skies
of circling crows.

The floor around me would move
dancing along,
It would lead me and my pen to paper
Like a knight's sword to stone.
I would wonder why my mind
Could paint,
My thoughts would explode
into millions of fireflies.

Sometimes I would see the most
flawless imagery
But I couldn't write it down for the awe
of being lost,
Inside my own world of untold stories,
and poetry.