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 May 2017 Charles Upton
mrmonst3r
This bed is like a coffin
With a burial each night.
I could tell you where
it all went wrong
But it wouldn't make it right.
I'm never worth
Remembering
You each showed me that.
With your pretentious self obsession
Words that always fell flat.
Each day is long and empty.
I cannot find my way,
So forgive me
Graciously
While I slowly fade away.
1472

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white.
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day.
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

And we are put on earth a little space..
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care.
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me.
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.

— The End —