Again the dream creeps in.... It's a gray dreary day The sky is crying just like every one else there that I dare look at Leaves are falling down dancing In the wind until they land on the ground I see a hole and dirt beside it I hear someone talking a male's voice but I cannot understand what or who they are talking about Then a chill sweeps over me As a sudden realization about where I am hits me as my sisters squeeze my hands One on each side of me and I scream out and say NOOOOO Momma doesn't want to be all alone A silent prayer is lost in the wind As they lower the casket I start to feel weighted down and start slipping from The grip of my sisters and my family People are talking to me but it feels as if I'm in a tunnel and they are a long way off Then I feel dirt being thrown on me I think this isn't right why am I in the hole Momma cannot breathe Now I cannot breathe and then... I wake up
She closed the door on another year that was never hers from the start She breathed a sigh of relief in the darkness of her heart For another year is not for her She no longer has it in her to pretend all over again a Loser can become a Winner
Not a bottle, nor a song nor a conversation could 'ere last too long Not a heartbeat, nor a rhyme Never a marriage not this time Nothing lasts forever my friend! Not even the pages we scribe! Neither oil nor acrylic even water based leaks under the test of time No ink will outlast us No pencil could describe either of our loneliness completely erased by the tide Nothing lasts forever The sunset taught me that! The sunrise fools us into thinking that the sun will stay where it sat It's why we keep on going knowing, nothing will ever last We die each night only to wake pretending we forgot the past
To the Romeo car-washing in Inglewood inlets To the Hippy selling crystals on the Venice boardwalk The Magician swallowing 8-***** at the Huntington Beach peer The Rapper selling CDs in the Ranch Market parking lot The **** tatting in a makeshift garage The Poet slinging chapbooks at cafes and rec centers…
Not androids pontificating from lecterns But grimy roots burrowing deep Seismic rumblings toppling down Insured ivory towers Smashing pilled-paradigms beneath Docs Hustling and slinging In the forbidden outshacks of civilization In tents, over barbed-wire, beside shards Desperate and burning For neither Truth or Beauty But for LIFE
They do not tap wrists No, they thump chests To feel it beat To feel it rage For fugitive fugues For new eternities
They embrace ******* romance Graveyard necromance The holy hunger for change Defying commercials and charts Shivering and howling on streets Waging guerrilla war Liberating cubicled-hearts
To all of you poets down South and up North West and to the East whoever you are whatever your beliefs I wish you much joy happiness and peace for on this one night at least think no more of spite, anger and war sickness, sorrow or grief for wherever you are may kindness be the star that lights all of our ways.
Warm as soil beneath spring sun banishing memories of januarys frost time has not dulled your light my skin heals my scars soften your flowers bloom again each spring as nesting birds begin to sing Roses grow within you
Birds are singing outside our windowon a beautiful morning. Nests are being repared and the plants are flexing themselves
I remember how the blood on the tip of each blade of grass in the sun where it had splashed made them look like tiny swords you see in picture books when my friend placed his hand on a stone and took a knife to his finger right through the bone for pointing out the faults of his father to his face who later hung himself in disgrace and the son with the stump by his right thumb felt the pain one thousand times as he flung his father's shame all around praying for a cleansing rain to come water the flowers by the grave and wash the sheen of his sin away to make everything all clean and green once again.