brown skin farmer girl (this changeling poem)

~

we are I’ve decided

alike and unlike.

I know, an epiphany.

we are both brown skinned,

the sun has wrested my skin

buried it in dark loamy,

soiled brown side by side,

now alike.


your hair is long(er)

now, mine too.

a cascading mountain ranging,

edging south from your Columbia,

to my  Columbia

over my ears, down my neck,

which like yours, dreams knightly

of being loved by endless kisses,

a prince(ss) charmant

~

we could not be

more different,

than how god us designed.

but here’s the rub,

people change,

they dream of becoming,

reinventing the original design,

and this explains

not the why, but the how,

how this poet came to write

this changeling poem.

~

and you think we could not be more different and
more alike, and you would be rightly correct.

what color is hate?

think hard, answer, not easily up-conjured,
obvious choices, careful be, exclude not, some voices,
no rush, think upon it careful, after all, hate hates variations,
it, as old original as the Garden of Eden

you desire answer, something quick, *****,
look to very nature of hate, so easy spewed,
after centuries of construction, yet, there is
nothing quick about hating, tho learnt early on

some variants of millennium length, eons short,
oh weep, at this great irony of ironies, hate is so
innate engrained, is it in the red blood, cells of the
white colored brain apparatus we all share?

unnatural impossibly genetic. don’t believe it.

hate is colorless like air, like clear water.
how else could it be so easy given, taken.
innocent innocuous is the color of hate,
easy transmitted, and never to be a vaccine

until it can be seen how we implant it within ourselves.


11:40pm
Sat Jul 11

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


that which used to take ten minutes
now takes an hour or
two

something's that used to take an hour or
two,
now take ten minutes, give or
take,
(mostly I do the taking)

(or as the little voice whispers, the mostly
faking)

betcha you'd like to which is what
and what is which being bewitched,

I ain't spilling no beans
cause I value my insanity's privacy,
and I don't got to give that up just yet

but if you want the worst of what little I got left,
unhappily I will approach the old muse
begging me giving me something to use,
bad she turns away bad she say

"You all tricked out,
you wares worn,
ye old styles from yester last month
you been styled by
  H&M;
30 days max,
then
ring in the new, and if all sold,
or none-at-all,
too bad for you

then you gotta decide:

wear a watch
or watch the wearing
with  small
pleasures sighed,
confirming,  night-moves,
gonna
Keep On Keeping On
Living

_____


another mourning morning, usual signs of warning,
wanted to wash away the distress signs of no sleep,
turned on the tap, out came only troubled waters,
my only friend, the voice from the mirror, pretending
to be coming from me, speaking: Oh Lord, Oh Lord!

is there no surcease for me, somewhere, can I find,
little bites, small plates, pieces of peace, the kind
of kindness that eases, repairs the dividers of mind,
the country stone fences that been growing wilder,
when, troubled child of 10, window breaking, beyond
youthful mischievousness, evil streaked, so deemed

Give me a boat, give me a bridge, give me a road, a home,
one of those things poets, songwriters about, wax lyrical,
Oh Lord, give me time, 45 seconds, even two or three,
Being strong, being confident, am I not entitled to that,
a boat, sturdy mast, cause sailing from storm to storm,
just glimpsing dry land, is that too much, a pale beyond?

love, nah, a bridge too far, not even on the menu, not blinded,
I am off key, not well enough, between the peaks between,
I am out of sync, bubbling discombobulated, a **** besided, behind,
lend  me a finger, not even a hand, a kernel, not even a cob,
a string, forget a rope, a washcloth to bathe and dry,
lay me down, lay me down, to live, even just not dying.

no plea here tendered,
long time are we past
the boundary of cooling
cooing brotherly tenderness

reason has been Joseph sold into slavery,
nary a Moses, who talks to God, is answered,
be seen or heard, to reconcile the divisive souls
of our fratricidal words

a morning’s reflection,
soon to be gone, passing,
of two pockmarked differing clouds,
scratching this morning blue drenched sky

a white, rotund cumulus rose,
one gray, rough, tumbled, worn,
ill tempered, of rain possessed,
but both clouds, each purposed

but this Sabbath day,
as this pale land reopens,
to bitter cries, minor rejoicing,
wise counsel, foundering, ignorance prevailing

forbearance, a weighty silence, circumscribed,
daytime highlights, disregarded, heads closed,
nowhere to found, just, a colorless pallor, a rasher
of fratricidal words

<>

“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
Have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”


Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman

                                                      ­      §§§

A night of reckoning, calculations repeated-checked, sums divided,
did I use too many, or not enough, words to be understood, verbiage eloquent,
did daytime reveal my poetic meanings, or double-occlude it’s essence?

I have reckon’d Manhattan Isle, circumnavigated its riverbed boundaries, a younger me, by kayak rounded it, from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Battery, 14,500 acres give or take, a lifeatime to complete a dead reckoning, an unfinished full configuring.

but haven’t reckon’d that Earth and I will be entwined/entombed in each other’s arms, until such time, one of us or both, will be reduced to cosmic dust, our pride, our poems, will be equally unimportant and irrelevant, I reckon.

in retrospective rear view perspective, come to understand that we spend every moment of our lives, reckoning, determine the odds of which fork we will take, laugh out loud, for each moment, a poem  is titled, the resultant, a poem - who needs a muse, you’ve got choices!

So, yes, Walt, the questing  answers you’ve requested:
Aye, yes, yup, but no to pride, for pride and poetry in one sentence is
a death sentence at multiple levels, pride, poetry, ego, suicide,...sins,
so better no proud for it is the entree, the invitation to fall-fail...
                                                   ­      §§§§§


12:03AM  Frieday
May 15th
my deadline missed,
but what is three minutes,
but empty pride...
Manhattan Island