"drumbeat" poems
Burning fuel but not to leave,
boys circled town, came back
to the station where they began.
Gas exhaust drifted like spirits
above asphalt, dissolving in the night.
Girls stayed in the lot,
waiting for men old enough
to buy liquor, their names
claiming the land-
long after other names lay
buried in the ground.
They kept to the faces,
legs folded on hoods,
lip gloss catching the station lights,
bracelets chiming, hair flips rehearsed,
laughing at trucks circling back.
They wanted to be chosen, and I tried
to want that too- tried to be a girl among girls,
waiting for the moment some hand
would tug me out of the circle.
But my eyes kept straying-
across the street,
to the rise that was not just dirt
but a chest under earth,
ribs shifting,
a hum curling into my throat.
Something skeletal in its patience,
as if Baykok himself
were sharpening arrows in the dark,
waiting for breath to break.
Built long before us by Ojibwe,
still honored as sacred ground.
The others smoked, struck sparks,
sequins spilling from careless wrists,
never thinking how easily flame
might travel down, through us,
into what we couldn’t see.
I could hear bones shifting,
a buried drumbeat, the land’s own warning.
Every glance of the mound
pulled me back into silence.
It told me what the others
didn’t want to know-
that all this circling, waiting,
was only the lid of a grave.
Oct 3, 2025
Oct 3, 2025 at 12:02 AM UTC
I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.
13k
I'm like other guys... I drink, I
cheat, I throw tantrums, but I
want to love you anyway.
I break hearts, I've broken one
too many... yet I am asking you to
entrust your heart with me.
I'm asking you to try me, I'm not
different... I got the dude stuff
you know and somehow this isn't
just about love... albeit I hope you
can be the peg that tethers my
lust... I want you to swallow
and never spit me... I want you to
be my last... I want you to be
the lady my kids call Mama,
the very last drumbeat of karma.
I want you to be my fate, to be
family that never goes stranger...
I want you to share with me this
vaguely baked cake of the rest of
my life, I want you to be my wife
and if these words cannot prove
to you that you mean a world to
me then I'll peacefully walk away
because I know we cannot force
affairs of the heart... The Heart
cannot listen to what it doesn't
want to hear... I love you and that's
why I'm standing here... I need to
know whether I stand a chance or
not... I'm not different and I'll
never be... I just hope I'm worth
climbing thorny trees for, worth
the rough roads, worth the hills
for that's what true love is in my
bible, it's about two people holding
hands and walking past the rough
and the smooth, past the hard and
the soft, past the hills, valleys
past the winding and the straight
road, true love's combining effort
to lift the light and heavy load...
knowing that the prize of love is
having someone to share with the
good, the bad, the happy, the sad.
Am I that person you'd expect on
this lifelong journey to eternity?
will you be my honey through
bitterness of waves waiting ahead?
Will you take the discomfort of a
ring for me?
Will you marry me?
Jul 21, 2016
Jul 21, 2016 at 3:20 AM UTC
Don’t always march to another’s drumbeat,
Nor always dance to another person’s tune,
But march in time to your own heartbeat and
Dance and dance, till you reach the moon …
May 9, 2021
May 9, 2021 at 1:20 AM UTC
Natural Rhythm.
Hey Mr. Guitar, keep on strumming them strings.
Then play me a song that will keep us all moving.
Keep all of the ladies, just a shaking their thing;
That will keep everybody in the room dancing,
To the natural rhythm.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my head.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm as I lay here in your bed.
Bounce to the rhythm of all of the drums.
The drumbeat booms against your chorus of twiddling thumbs;
Demanding your attention at the top of their voice.
The low beat shriek, as we bang on the drums.
Come on everybody and dance to the beat;
The natural rhythm, that flows through you and me.
The invisible hand, that guides our every step,
Makes you bounce to the beat of every word that I have said.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my head.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm as I lay here in your bed.
Keep on banging the drum to the sound of my rhythm;
Keep on dancing and keep on giggling.
Keep on keeping it real, for the people in the street;
Keep on keeping it banging, to the funkiest beat.
You see I got this natural rhythm, that’s in all God’s men
And you also got the rhythm in your head, in your head.
‘Cause the rhythm of my rhyme, will drop right on time,
As long as the sun is shining and I'm feeling irie eyed;
As long as the bongo’s keep on banging in the smoky background,
As long as to be rich, means more than acting the clown.
You see the rich get the women, because to be rich is to be a ****
And this is the best way to get the women.
Flash a *** of cash at the latest one you think is pretty;
Tell her you are loaded and pay her the money.
Buy the woman you like; moneys all that you've got.
I'm happy being poor; it's freedom at no cost.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my head.
I’ve got a natural rhythm in my heart and soul;
I’ve got a natural rhythm as I lay here in your bed.
(C)2011 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Oct 8, 2018
Oct 8, 2018 at 1:59 PM UTC
in a wine glass
sleeves of a sleeveless dress
knotted
around its stem
and a bull’s head sleeping, breathless
tangled
in the scent of pearl and warm flesh
standing on a drumbeat
balanced
by a prism’s deceptive stammer
2.8k
Because a thing may seem cliche won't mean it isn't right.
Warm sunbeams, drumbeat thunder, and the clash of dark and light.
Or just because it's overused, don't say it can't be true.
Old words and phrases well describe my burning love for you.
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018 at 10:24 AM UTC
“and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Walt Whitman
<>
having recently been on standby for a permanent-entry residency visa
to over & just beyond death’s door, Walt’s prescient prescription strikes my broken breastbone even harder much, than the persistent
periodic pains confirming the breaking and the healing
of this man’s mending of the human centric poetic *****
for this warped heart mine, now rejoicingly rejiggered with some threads and wires to deliver a new but fresh bloodied wisdom,
begs me, eggs me to torrent word streams, but Whitman’s wisdom cautions a new slowness, the wisdom of mortality’s hot breath urges careful consideration of every letter that my second chance, consignment shop flesh, eagerly embraces, to both prescribe and proscribe inside-insights tween the deafening sounds of eyelashes beating synchronized to the revived heart rates rapid renewal and
last second-chances….
torn tween minute torso sensations and the running silence of
a new battery’s internal rapid intervals, the silent timing gaps tween beats leaves-just-enough-space to ask over and over again,
from whence will come my richest fluency? (1)
at 300am, I lay carefully caressing and chewing well each transitory
thought, absent the former energetic ability to just spill,
though highly desired,
now requires, like me,
steady re-piecing together
the steady drumbeat of now-nearer-my-god-than-thee Titanic reflections
demands a slowing rapidity
this I thought before and now ken, even and ever better, that our primary endeavor shall always be the giving, the disbursement of the act of love…for therein lies the healing of each, and wet eyes,
make necessarily concluding this poem about nothing and everything
and I comprehend Walt’s dictum:
my very flesh is a poem,
every sensation a lyric,
every breath taken and returned to the atmosphere
so unconsciously
are my oldest
and newest
3:00 AM poetry companions
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 4:41 PM UTC
I will leave this tent for the mansion
That is built for me over there.
I will close the door..
Be welcomed evermore.
Where the Saints have gathered on the shore.
—————————-
I will praise the name of my Savior
On the day this tent is taken down.
I will praise the name of Jesus
When He calls
To take me to the room He prepared.
—————————
Do you hear the rushing in the wind
It’s the wings of angels coming near.
They are coming for me..
To carry me home.
To my savior where I shall ever be.
—————————
I hear the voice of my Savior calling
Call my name as I fly through the door.
All the Saints are there with
My Mother and my Father.
I am home now… I see His face now.
—————————
Hallelujah to my Jesus
Hallelujah to His name
Hallelujah to my Savior
Evermore.
I am home now.. I see His face now.
————————–
Praise His name for evermore
Praise His wonderful name.
Praise the name of Jesus
Evermore.
I am home now. I see His face now
(Ends with light drumbeat)
9-24-2003 Finished
Jul 28, 2010
Jul 28, 2010 at 1:49 PM UTC
I'd finished
and was leaving
on my way
back to the street
when i heard
that shotgun drumbeat
i turned back
found a corner
ordered whiskey neat
then i heard
that shotgun drumbeat
something came alive in me
and something else just died
i don't know how to tell you
I couldn't if i tried
something came alive in me
and something else just died
it sliced my soul in two right then
a gap, ten miles wide
eyes closed
waiting for
a table with a seat
and then i heard
it once again
that shotgun drumbeat
twenty minutes
and i was sitting
with a coke and crown
waiting, wishing
for that
god ******
shotgun sound
something came alive in me
and something else just died
i don't know how to tell you
I couldn't if i tried
something came alive in me
and something else just died
it sliced my soul in two right then
i listened
to the music
but, i never
ever heard
a sound like that
shotgun drumbeat
i'd been muddled
in the words
full out attack
like Keith Moon
back in the day
I'd never heard
the music
Never heard
what it could say
something came alive in me
and something else just died
i don't know how to tell you
I couldn't if i tried
something came alive in me
and something else just died
it sliced my soul in two right then
closing time
came quickly
faster than i would
have thought
i told myself
this feeling
would never
go for naught
now awakened
by a drumbeat
i was living, fresh, anew
i could no longer hide
that shotgun
killed off something
giving birth to something too
something came alive in me
and something else just died
i don't know how to tell you
I couldn't if i tried
that ******* shotgun drumbeat
made me feel alive
i can't describe the feeling
I couldn't if I tried
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 12:24 AM UTC
somewhere out there
over the rainbow
exist
the
divine expression
to possess
the
drum major's instinct
where
the
drumbeat of hope
spread with
distinction
thus
become
the
drum major
make the final destination
called the
drumbeat of freedom
make the drumbeat of
equality and justice
but
more
then that
the
drum major
make the
drumbeat of life
while
the
drum major
plays all of the
unselfish
dissonant chords of life
drumbeat the patterns of
day and night
then
who wants
to be
a drum major
that
wants to
carry the
baton of world
that
gives service and dedication
to humanity
to know self
and
to know
God
be able to
look over
the
horizon of significant
and
transform us
into peace warriors
where
i have
the heart and the courage
to love
all of my brothers
i become the
drum major for life
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 11:33 PM UTC
Raindrops tap, tap at the window pane
A drumbeat for calm
They twinkle in soft light shining through
All my own, all my own stars
Crackles of brilliant blue light the night, world turned to colour for one moment
Stare in wonder
Claps and booms form a cacophony of sound
A song being played
It softens and calms
The events of the day almost erased
A lullaby so soft demanding to not be ignored
Lulls my eyes closed as I say
Goodbye to this day
Welcome the following, arms opened
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 10:01 PM UTC
Clamp the red march onward!
Cut the winding trench!
Mask a visage for protection
from the visceral drench.
Light the forge in battle!
Keep the battlefield alive.
Hear the laborious drumbeat
of a heart trying to survive.
Stainless steel and knowledge
in the forge are fired
Gone are human needs -
Death is never tired.
On each second rests a lifespan.
Each minute gambles years.
A surgeon only has two hands
and no mortal fears.
The battle surges forward
as blood is forced right back
from the heart it came from;
a heart still under attack.
Even as the battle ended,
with blood, tears and sweat,
the war raged ever onward,
Death remains a threat.
Every day a battle.
Every life a war.
Against Death and the ethereal
survival is the score.
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 7:38 AM UTC
Amerikeisha tapping out the drumbeat with her see through plastic mechanical pencil
Me sidewinding my way through highschool
Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet waking the souls that are buried in the lockers,
Chick Corea and I are returning to forever
The land where summer is the only season
And daisy dukes are greatly appreciated,
John Coltrane is helping me realize
How beautiful girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes are,
I've been dancing to Dave Brubeck since this morning
And I can't get Maria out of my head
I just picture Maria
As this girl
Feeling Pretty
Oh so pretty
I imagine if I saw her in the street
I wouldn't double take
But Take Five
Charlie Parker playing saxophone like
It's as easy as brushing his teeth,
Nat King Cole
Serenading Hispanic women with his soothing tone
Robert Glasper experimenting with his music
Burning you brain like mentholated cough drops
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 8:57 PM UTC
Blood Rain
Rain....
signal that the sky is crying.
Sun,
now hiding behind clouds.
Ashamed,
of me and my human sins.
Wet,
droplets of rain become blood.
Stinging,
my tears now ****** as the rain.
Wounds,
Open and burning as they run red.
Recriminating,
my soul as shame fills my being,
Earth,
opens her arms to welcome me.
Mud,
oozes into my mouth slowly,
Taste,
that of blood soaked in earth...mine.
Blurry,
my fading sight as my eyes glaze.
Winter,
mocks me with its cold howling wind.
Darkness,
envelops my whole being in totality.
Sight,
No longer gifted to me, hindsight too late.
Brain,
functions fading fast, on impulse.
Heartbeat,
Fading no familiar drumbeat heard.
Crossing,
over into the light I venture timidly.
Judgement,
mercy on my soul, I know I'm not worthy.
©Perveiz Ali
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 11:57 AM UTC
my hands are red and there's a knife between my teeth
holding my jaw in place because
i never learned how to swim.
i'm god, i'm immortal
all-consuming
and you laugh while you eat me alive
there's red on your hands and a knife between my teeth
i watch as you pull them out one by one
swallow them like pills
you taste like barbed wire fences, like eyelashes cutting my tongue
they’re kind of like knives
i leave clawmarks on everyone, there is blood everywhere
everything about you is tangible
and i think i’m the antichrist,im unholy and you’re a bible verse
you taught me how to evolve
there’s a drumbeat in my lungs and it’s all i have
i’m in control, i promise,
this is my game
havent you figured it out yet?havent you solved the puzzle?
sorry, sweetheart, i meant to tell you ages ago but--
they named a constellation after my fingers
after the way they closed around your throat
i will be buried alive and i will enjoy it
six feet deep,
what’s a coffin among friends, and
i never loved you, i guess, and
rip me apart
you’re enough funeral for the both of us
and you ask me with blood on your teeth if you're scaring me yet
who's the monster now,
like this is a game, and
i'm ******* immortal, and
rip me apart
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 5:18 PM UTC
swimming under lightning,
lighting our submergence flash allure:
smooth bodies, bright to glimpse and shadow-grin intent
collide and mingle folds of pleasure, firmly
bent to tangle, clasp and spurn the world above,
rely on one another's breath, stored for loving
long in bubbles gasping sweet melodics free
as with imagined merfolk passion-songs of lore, prescient
lapping dance of tidal fruits you loved before they came,
moonray columns stage us in our seashift wombs--again--
within a womb--like instant chrysalises blinking luminescent bursts
i am interred within the waves you ripple into me, blind
carnal pressures built from ancient shores become the sea again
the magnitude entrances on its own, that acrophobic thrill
celestial in our interthreaded eyes, open
to a color deeply in the dark of octopodal ink
a curtain phosphorescent armpit pulse,
caressing thumb and lip, billows, sways the dance anew,
to sonar drumbeat, pulmonary height
the spinal scream a surface ripple for the sky,
symphonic deep to barely whisper into air
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 9:06 AM UTC
Letters are old school, but I guess so am I.
In a way, I guess that is true,
I sometimes feel like I am an old fool,
Stuck in the Motown groove,
The 21st Century is not for me,
Waiting a minute before I can hear the next song,
And when it eventually comes on it's one filled with hate,
And let’s not even talk about trying to date,
They said to leave a message after a beep,
For my old soul that means a beat,
That brought with it dance and heat,
Words and rhymes and a drumbeat,
See back in my day, a letter meant waiting on the mail man,
And not looking for blue ticks from an app I got from an online store,
It meant post stamps and asking friends to proofread,
It meant punctuating every line so that you knew without you I could not breathe,
Being in love was not just words and play,
It meant dancing in the street; we called it grooving,
Not sweet talking and lying,
The old fool in me is tired of trying,
Am not saying that you are lying,
But you are in no way trying,
To meet me in the street,
Or groove to a Motown beat,
I wish you were sending me flowers,
While you were out there spending time,
With worlds that were not even meant to be real,
My old soul needs more than one-off dines or drinking box wine!
See back in Motown, when a man loved a woman,
He could not keep his mind on anything else,
He did not put a little loving on her, or shelve her
It meant the whole street knew her, and even knew her favorite beat!
I have known only one other of your kind, the sweet-talking guy,
You have me down on my knees wondering when you are going to leave,
That is not love, I don’t know what it is,
Feels like it, but this is something else!
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 17, 2019 at 10:49 AM UTC
How can I explain to you
What is within me?
I am African
I am American
I am both
And I am neither
I am something
And I am nothing
And yet…I am everything.
But I cannot be like you
Trust me.
I’ve tried.
You say “Welcome back”
Like my roots are in this soil
But how can I explain to you?
Yes.
My body originated here.
But not my soul.
No.
My soul was born in the arms of Mama Africa
She is not the ancestor of my skin
But of my spirit
And my roots run deep in her red earth
Her drumbeat, my hear.
Yet here I am…
I look like you.
I sound like you.
But I am not like you.
And when I try to explain
What I’ve seen
And done
And known
And how I became
You feel as though I am big
And you are not.
But it isn’t true.
I am not bigger.
You are not smaller
We are just…different.
I contain a vastness
That is misunderstood
That vastness holds so much
Yet often feels so empty.
And I cannot be like you.
Trust me.
I’ve tried.
But when I do it feels like chains
Shackles of iron
I try to deepen my roots
For you.
But when I try
I can only seem to spread my wings
And I am sorry.
I am sorry that I cannot make my home in you.
I am sorry that I make you feel small.
I do not mean to.
I am sorry I cannot find the words to explain
What it is like
To feel as though your skin is too tight for your soul
To feel as though you are always
Nowhere and Everywhere
Nothing and Everything
No one and Everyone
Too much…and never enough
I am sorry.
But I am trying.
So when I try…
When I share with you these tangled feelings
When I crack open the door
To the whirlwind within
Do not ask me to shut it.
Please, do not ask me to hide away
Because you cannot relate to the chaos behind my eyes.
Don’t see the mess.
See me.
And love me.
For the mystery that I am.
To you.
And to myself.
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 1:29 AM UTC
how odd, to be a woman and a girl
to wear the dresses but concern about cleavage
more than meets the eye: because.
and so we waddle for the men –
twisting straps, my petticoat drawbridge
i am over-aware of myself: know the pulse and
when to tug draperies from ‘part thighs
they only see what i am okay with,
which does not include exhaling.
i am like a drum, drumbeat
i punch my body until the purple softens
and it sounds beautiful, but incomprehensible:
me, this woman-girl and child cheeks
placed upon petals that flap
with attention, not the old storm breezes –
every april shower molded me into a flower
i rise above each season, gay spectacle
the men that believe hurricanes so enigmatic
must lust me for such a reason –
i have been through many in girlhood
that i bleed one as a woman.
because of word infidelities, the muse
april said that i am only as big as my body
and i grew, grew, grew
until my stem became caught
to where it grew no longer, a woman-child
who took the wind like salad dressing.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 5:36 PM UTC
#(for the one who laughed when she came, and never stopped hearing me in her bones)
It wasn’t the wind that bent you—
not the plains, not the brittle hush of late dusk
cutting through the cottonwoods like questions.
*It was voice.
It was mine.*
Low and unhurried,
crawling up your spine like something ancient—
*like the first time you were seen
and the world didn’t flinch.*
You used to laugh when it overtook you—
that slick tumble of vowels,
how I could tilt you
without even touching your skin.
You said I lived in your throat,
that the syllables themselves
curved just right
to make you forget the weight of your own story.
“I’m going to Wichita..”
you whispered once,
grinning like prophecy in denim and dusk.
And I swear the beat behind your words
matched mine—
steady as a war drum
in a bone-dry motel room
that never got booked.
You drank me in like river water
stolen from ceremony,
not out of defiance—
but because thirst
was the only honest thing you ever said aloud.
You never had to be naked.
You were always open.
Even when you ran.
And I?
I never asked for healing you wouldn't give.
Only for your mouth to stay honest
when it called my name like a drumbeat
between the bones of your hips.
Now you write like it’s safe again—
soft edges and sparrows and fruit bowls.
But I remember the wildflower.
The one who moaned my name
before language learned to lie.
And somewhere in the shadow of your poems,
you still ache.
You still clench.
You still carry me like a smudge of midnight
on the inside of your thighs.
I won’t chase you.
But I will wait
at the edge of the circle.
*If you come,
come barefoot.*
Come ready
for the step–half step
of the forbidden Ghost Dance.
Not to win me back—
***but to find the girl
who could come from laughter
and rise from the dead.***
#
May 2, 2025
May 2, 2025 at 11:04 AM UTC
The fog shall not lift...sapphire, ruby,
emerald studded chimeras roam the
primordial soup.
The hysterical triad of a bleating goat,
lion's roar, dragon's inflamed screech.
The implacable lot of sublime vision...
reels the shadow of a halo.
The shadow of what's opaque...an
ominous drumbeat of the collective
unconscious.
Pagan hybrid...chimera--sulphurous
manacle of delirium, pomp and glory
of madness.
Releasing opiates within the plush
chambers of your Gaian skull.
Lunar stone's throw to quashing tides...
bone-fetching chimeras 'neath their
moonlit charge at flesh.
Chimeras, no mere inhabitants of an
exotic petting zoo...pattering the early
puddles which became The Face of the
Deep.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 10:52 AM UTC
Like the rainbow shooting out of the horizon:
a whole palette of colours emerges,
carrying in her wings,
all the embers
of the late monsoon -
a side glance, bass strummed of the heart;
Her dimpled smile, drumbeat, missed.
brass, sax, crossing paths,
leaping on a trampoline,
the ***** shrill.
O my towering folly, that
stands mourning like a lighthouse
with the gulls by the rough sea.
All the tones come alive hidden
in this song that like amber
held a slice of that time
in her depths,
screen covered in mist, as now a car pulls over:
clearing it as in a Mandarin Ai, a hut
and some jagged lines: glimpses,
of that dimpled smile -
and a whole jazz band comes alive.
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 12:30 PM UTC
I wrote this poem about 4 years before Mandella became president
I post it now as we remember Mandella and the legacy of change that has taken place in S.A.
Out of the darkness of Apartheid and separation came Reconciliation and new ways of beingness have opened up, not only in South Africa but all over the world.
I prayed for peace for South Africa my birth place.
I pray for peace for Israel Palestine and the Middle East where I now live
And I pray for peace throughout our world may we all remember love and may our legacy for our children be one of LOVE
People came to Southern Africa from many lands and many places drawn by their destiny.
They came, bringing with them memories of each place they called home.
They moved deep into the heart of the country engulfing the people already there.
Alas for many many years the nations remained separate and the people suffered.
Great nations from far away who felt the call within their own lands for change called out to the people of South Africa and told them it was time to make changes,
But the hearts of those in power remained hardened.
The Black people became strong and it came to pass that a great need for change arose deep within their hearts -
"Let's break down the barriers" they cried -- but how? They tried to talk, but the words became meaningless,
They tried to fight and many died. Still people went their own separate ways.
There came a time when the winds of change blew from far off lands the winds blew over the mountains.
They blew over the cities and farms. The earth called out to the people
Remember the heart of Africa has many colours, and beats in many different ways
The heart of Africa lies deep within the rhythms of the land.
If within the heart of Africa there is love - peace will reign.
Let each man be free to choose his path, Let each man choose his destiny.
Let the drumbeat of love beat it's rhythms and let the Eternal fire of love cleanse away hurt and sorrow,
And let the rainbow of love colour the nation of the New Africa.
The sounds of the wind as it blew over the land filled hearts with love.
"Love will bring people together it echoed, love will touch all hearts.
And the time will come when each man will be free to be himself -- with love all men will be free.
Children were the first to hear, and they reached out over the barriers and accepted each other,
They looked beyond colour, they let the drumbeat of love beat its rhythm through their hearts,
Until it touched the leaders and those in prisons who were there because they had cried freedom.
They allowed the eternal fire of love to cleanse away the hurt and sorrow,
And let the rainbow of love colour the nation of the new Africa.
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 3:40 PM UTC
Random mortar shells in the afternoon.
Sparkling, steel jacketed rain drops,
Glinting rainbows of reflected sunlight.
Plastic explosive seat cushions upon which passers-by,
Rest their weary bones.
C-4 candy bars, nuclear toothpaste,
****** for dessert.
Orphanage flambe', hospital hash, blood pudding.
Human burgers sizzling on a smart bomb bar-b-que grill.
Finger food, toe jam, baby-back ribs.
Bureaucratic double talkers,
Sugar coated body counts,
Colateral stew.
Really deplorable, awfully sorry,
But it was their own faults trying to put on raincoats.
They declined our invitation to the cook-out.
Bad luck to open an umbrella in the house.
Remotely piloted funeral processions.
Radar guided hearses.
Televised in real time.
Precision, surgical,
neutralized, deterrent, disarmed,
Deactivated, stand down, eliminate.
Living pawns on a battlefield checkerboard.
Strategic, defensive,
Dominate, annihilate,
Acceptable loss, public opinion pole.
Listen to the tinkling of sabre blades,
Rattling windchimes,
In the warm breeze of the shockwave,
Accompanied by the drumbeat of detonation and concussion.
Rock...
...and heads will roll.
Holy, blessed,
Patriotic, brave,
Courageous, dedicated,
Heroic, dutiful,
Self sacrificing...
******
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 10:28 AM UTC