"redder" poems
They didn't know what Diversity was...
The kids, that is.
Since the kids didn't know it,
the teacher coined it as "“black” visibility".
She wasn't sure if she could make that call
so she nodded her head, looking for approval.
The interviewer asked in what direction did the teacher see Diversity
As if Diversity was a one-way street.
Let me just refresh your memory...
"“black” visibility"
As if decades of progress in the schools were undone,
The kids voted on Performances and Projects for “black” History Month.
How shocking!... Kids of every shape, size, ability and race studying a time in history...
Sounds racist to me.
They wanted a Gospel Choir that is clearly only for “black” students
Because I'm the student Director for the Fordham University's Rhythm of Praise Gospel Chior for the fourth year running...
Maybe I'm missing something...
MAYBE I'm “black”... Maybe if I close my eyes really tight...
Nope, I'm still “white”.
Olive brown perhaps?
Only in the summer.
Anyway, I digress like Sophia Patrilo from the Goldren Girls
Who was Italian by the way.
Just advertising for Diversity.
Let's debate about "Music Debates" for a moment.
Maybe you call it Debates because Hip Hop is debatable, and by the way only for “black” students.
When I could argue for days upon days
About how Reggaeton didn't come from Salsa
but I know **** well that Salsa came first.
The kids wanted to Stomp the Yard and battle it out.
I do believe rap battles take place around the world
And one of the best rappers I know is an English teacher in Harlem
Whose hair is redder than a leprechaun.
Talent Shows that showcase every student's ability
Whether it be singing, dancing, performing their poetry,
But still apparently that's not Diversity.
Neither is an International Day
Where International ways are celebrated.
And finally, a Diversity Day,
That clearly means diversity is separated.
"They wanted a lot of things"
Yeah. They asked for a whole lot... of everything BUT diversity.
That's right, because they don't know what it means
The Kids, that is...
Then tell me please:
Define Diversity.
Is it seeing a “black” horse with “white” stripes
Or a “white” horse with “black” stripes?
Why is it between “black” and “white”?
Why not between “white”, “black” brown, yellow, orange, brick red...
Let's get it out of our head
That teachers can't learn anything from their students,
Because it sounds to me,
Like they had a pretty good start to the meaning of Diversity.
And if it turns out they didn't,
That's what teachers are there for:
Make a **** lesson about it.
Sep 26, 2011
Sep 26, 2011 at 2:16 PM UTC
It's beginning...
As my day matured into the tangerine sun.
Familiar feelings effortlessly conjured as the same old tales were spun.
Some came in hues of marmalade
Traces of citrus that left in haste.
Initial sweetness on the palate that would fade
Only making way for a bitter aftertaste.
A few were wrapped in tints of ginger.
A jolt-like sensation that spoke...
Intense and unmistakable in nature.
Like glowing embers engulfed in latent flames and smoke.
Several bore the colours and scent of marigold
Boasting of orange petals whimsically waving to the clouds...
Whispering hints of rumours from days of old,
Days of when mine was the only silent face in a boisterous crowd.
The ones forged in bronze were few and hardly said.
Like the only compelling excerpt embedded within infinite chapters.
Hidden words in plain sight strung together boldly in red.
Rubies cast carelessly in the swiftest of rivers...
It is beginning...
The end of today as the sun grew redder...
I'd bide the sands of time as it slips away into forever...
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 11:33 AM UTC
Planes streak across the wide October sky–
The sun is setting–
Contrails stream behind them,
glowing scars of the evening.
The highest ones, they exhale the day’s gold,
pure and sharp
like fields of August wheat,
dusty and late-summer charred.
Redder and lower ones hug the skyline,
No cloud to catch them,
Fall like meteorites,
the slow burn of a dwarf star
Memories never print so vividly,
slow burn sees fast death,
Reds, golds and what's between,
A brain is all catch-and-release
So afterwards what should be left of this?
Not but an umbra,
Impressionist beauty,
A mere relief of its source?
Beauty’s slow fade is not the tragedy,
–rather the reverse–
That we fade to beauty,
To never hold it in full.
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 5:09 PM UTC
When Dona died
The spring grasses yellowed,
Our cheeks ashen. Her hair became a little redder
In our minds. The boy and the man strained
Under the constraints
Of communication. What was the sign
For "everything will be alright"? "Fine,"
Yes, you should say, "Fine." That is better.
Better than just, "okay".
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 4:02 PM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
Good intent,
Flowers growing from the ground when you lift a finger,
Are you magic or just heaven sent,
with a sick twist in the back of your mind is redder than hell's grip,
Your love is not be paid for,
No open wounds or burdens,
but you'll be the only I'd die for,
If you're angry enough to knock down those endings,
but the moon is full,
and my hands are covering faces,
shadows collide with affection with a drizzle of lips,
the atmosphere,
is nice out here,
When I'm kissing you,
Need to shed your tears,
I'm here.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 1:07 PM UTC
Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men- poor folks-
work.
That moment- to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind-
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.
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I'll be completely honest but not completely true
I'll be true to my heart but not always true to you
some of my words will reflect much of what I feel
while you'll find that other lines are more contrived to conceal
you see a poet can use their words to bear their deepest feeling
but look again and you may see something deeper redder bleeding
read again between the lines of the fresher tender cuts
and you'll brush a slower finger over old wounds long untouched
you may disturb my untold stories seeping through the pages
and find a heart much like yours where an older passion rages
Aug 1, 2018
Aug 1, 2018 at 5:43 PM UTC
The room was dank and dreary
The past hung in the air
There was a scent of mildew
A smell of history was there
The paint was old and faded
With stains all dark and brown
The wallpaper too was dated
And it needed to come down
It was a home for 50 years
That stood so strong and proud
It comforted all of our fears
Far from the madding crowd
We stripped away the paper first
Each layer a strip in time
It showed the old room at her worst
It really seemed a crime
To tear it down, and think of when
Each layer was first applied
The walls that seemed so tall again
I just stood there and cried
I thought about the birthdays
Celebrated in this room
Of getting covered all in glaze
That we cleaned off with a broom
The roses were much redder
Than I remembered them to be
In fact it now looked better
Than it did when I was three
I remembered Mother loved this
And of how it made her smile
And she gave Father a light kiss
After toiling all the while
The next layer though was not as nice
"Twas beige and a sort of lime
It made the room feel cold like ice
It spoke of another, somber time
I looked at the wall and I noticed the lines
Marking our heights as we grew
This was on a paper all covered in vines
Mom loved this one, we knew
It seemed surreal that Mom was not here
To see these passages pass
But we knew in our hearts that she was stil near
As we looked at paper covered with Bass
That was from when Unlcle Jim came to stay
And our folks gave up their room
To help out a brother who I still love to this day
One who can always help brighten my gloom
They changed the wall just for him
To make it seem more like it was his
They put their life on hold for Jim
And the wallpaper choice was his
The years pass by more quickly now
The paper doesn't change too much
Jim moved out and that is how
The paper changed just a touch
Mom got sick and Dad quit work
He did the room in flowers for our mom
It was at this time we noticed the rooms quirk
One of those things that made you go hmmm
Far up in one corner behind a section of curtain
Dad had left a small square showing the years
worth of papers we were certain
It was to help mom with her tears
Now as we finished we looked to the man
Sitting alone in the old corner chair
He smiled at us as best as he can
But I don't think he knew we were there
I handed him some paper and I looked in his eyes
He stared clear on through me
And then he started to cry
This was the last of this paper he'd see
Dad and the house now have gone into dust
The years get short and have tapered
But to go back in time I know all I must
Do, is look at my small square of paper.
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 3:08 PM UTC
What can you say about Pennsylvania
in regard to New England except that
it is slightly less cold, and less rocky,
or rather that the rocks are different?
Redder, and gritty, and piled up here and there,
whether as glacial moraine or collapsed springhouse
is not easy to tell, so quickly
are human efforts bundled back into nature.
In fall, the trees turn yellower-
hard maple, hickory, and oak
give way to tulip poplar, black walnut,
and locust. The woods are overgrown
with wild-grape vines, and with greenbrier
spreading its low net of anxious small claws.
In warm November, the mulching forest floor
smells like a rotting animal.
A genial pulpiness, in short: the sky
is soft with haze and paper-gray
even as the sun shines, and the rain
falls soft on the shoulders of farmers
while the children keep on playing,
their heads of hair beaded like spider webs.
A deep-dyed blur softens the bleak cities
whose people palaver in prolonged vowels.
There is a secret here, some death-defying joke
the eyes, the knuckles, the bellies imply-
a suet of consolation fetched straight
from the slaughterhouse and hung out
for chickadees to peck in the lee of the spruce,
where the husks of sunflower seeds
and the peace-signs of bird feet crowd
the snow that barely masks the still-green grass.
I knew that secret once, and have forgotten.
The death-defying secret-it rises
toward me like a dog's gaze, loving
but bewildered. When winter sits cold and black
slumped between its two polluted rivers,
warmth's shadow leans close to the wall
and gets the cement to deliver a kiss.
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My old great-aunt Elaine with her withered hands gave me $200 and beaded handbag
"This your mad money," she told me, as we sat on that nursing home couch, "And it ain't for your purse. This goes in your shirt, where only you know you got it."
The assisted-living nurse chuckled to herself. They got along, my great-aunt and her.
"Why?"
"Cuz if you get angry," she said, in that Marlboro-raspy voice of hers, "And you gotta go, you walk out on your date and you leave 'is *** And then you got your money for a strong drink. And your cab."
The nurse laughed
My aunt re-situated herself on the nursing home couch. Elaine Dauterive. Her mind was going, and so was her health, but she was as regal as a queen on her throne in that moment
her fire-red hair, ungrayed, was her crown
No cape as royal as that sleeping gown.
"Don't you think for once second I can't take care of you, honey," she said in that creole drawl, and I knew what she meant
Because even after she'd gone I would have that mad money
All stuffed in my bra for when I needed it
Because she was older than time, for me, seeing things like
The Great Depression, World War II
What I read in history books
I'd be ****** if I took what she said with even one grain of salt because Auntie-Lane, I'll be ****** if I don't love you
And I know you're on your way out and
I'll buy you whiskey in the afterlife with some of that $200 cash that you busted your *** scrounging up for me
Southern hospitality at its finest
And those liver spots redder than wine adorn you like badges of honor for all of the years you've endured
My elder - creole woman, with a soul as fire-red as her hair, breathing more smoke than air
My old dragon
On a pile of gold: her mad money
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 11:00 AM UTC
The grass is wearing my lipstick
and there's frost on my face.
I see no trace
of the bird that took my shoe.
The trees are looming over,
taking fun of my fallen state.
Is there nothing better for them to do?
My cheeks are redder than a
snowstorm,
the bugs are in my hair.
The bird has taken my other shoe,
They're tied up on the fairy lights.
Do they truly not care?
Because I fall they do not fight
their own fights.
A rabbit grew wings and gave me back
my shoes.
The grass returned my lipstick and the frost
cooled down my face.
Tomorrow I may fall again,
But of the trees,
there will be no trace.
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 7:16 PM UTC
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye—
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass—
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea—
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave—there is a movement there!
As if the towers had ****** aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low—
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
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It makes me feel
Lightheaded and fluffy
And makes my cheeks
Turn bright red
To think of my hand
In yours.
It's such a unique gesture,
Holding hands.
So intimate
Yet innocent.
Our hands will fit perfectly
Our fingers interlocked
Like the right pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
My heart will beat faster
Your cheeks will turn redder
And we will feel so much closer
To each other.
Your grasp will be so tight
It'll be impossible to let go.
Just like having the world
On my fingertips,
Literally.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 11:36 AM UTC
Sun slits in through slats
of kitchen window blinds
and she is alone.
The art major is cooking
spaghetti,
pretending her thrifted T-shirt
bearing a cotton copy
of Campbell's Soup Cans
is not stained with tears and blood.
Oh, but that's hysterics and
hyperbole;
art has a tendency of making its worshippers
melodramatic...no?
The blood is only tomato sauce
and the tears...
well, what are tears but
water and salt?
After all, dramatizing the
mundane is just one awkward shade
of artistic temperament.
Visualizing life through
a heavy silk screen.
The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is redder and
redder as she cooks.
Just as
her paintings bleed more blood
as she dangles a brush over them -
the teary-eyed watercolours.
The art major has decided
that drawing out extremities
of colour
might transform
her own life into
a pop of a Warhol painting.
The art major sighs and
stirs.
She thinks, tries to
think
in technicolour.
Today's thought-pencilled thesis
concludes (like a brush stroke of uncertain finality) that
love is the red of tomato soup cans.
Anger is the boil, passion is
the gulp,
danger, caution, warning,
the hot breaths, fleeting warmths,
the burn and sweet and tang.
She looks down at the
scarlet of
Warhol's soup cans,
blooming in worn out cotton
on her chest.
It might as well be blood, she
thinks.
It is,
it is,
it is.
Blood red love -
tomato soup cans.
Sun sets in slits
through kitchen window blinds
and she is still alone.
The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is ready.
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 6:41 AM UTC
They ask me how I feel.
How could I explain this?
The cracks and sizzles beneath my skin when anyone touches me now.
The snapping of my guts being removed from me,
and the empty pit left within.
My skin covered in
layers and layers and layers
of don't look at me.
I'm ashamed.
How could I tell the reasons
why my tears threaten to run away from me,
but I pull them back in.
Holding onto them tight,
so no one knows.
As if the salty water could wash away my front.
How could I make them grasp the fact that everything personal I've had is gone.
Every secret spread across my face.
Every crack and scrape once covered by makeup,
now pulsing redder and hotter than before.
There is no words for how I feel.
There is no script of what to say.
There's only one time I get to feel this way.
And it is the most terrifying thing in the world.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 8:14 PM UTC
lavender, lilac, and strawberry
I taste energy like yours rarely
make my cheeks redder than cherry
you have an essence, it is a blessing
you taught me lessons, such a blessing
I thought I was unlovable you showed me the contrary
make me sing like the giddy canary
was too used to solitary
read my feelings like a library
Apr 10, 2022
Apr 10, 2022 at 10:52 AM UTC
From way up high the world looked so small
From way up high he felt he was above it all
So there way up high he hung looking down all beneath
From up there he felt no one could touch him
Nothing could bring him down
So from up there he enjoyed his view of the world
Unconcerned about anything but himself
But one fateful day something changed
And as he playing in the wind he noticed a change
There on the tip of his leaf the colour began to change
Slowly but surely he began to turn red
At first he was terrified what did this mean
But the redder he got the more proud he got
He was the only red in a sea of green
So there he danced in the wind
Boasting to all that could hear of his new colour change
But then another change began to take place
Where once he felt secure and safe on his branch
He now began to feel like he was somehow slipping
He tried desperately to hold onto that which he knew
But fate had other plans
As the sun rose the next morning a playful gust of wind blew in
The wind blew through the tree that fateful morning
Rustling the leaves all around
The red leaf tried to hold on for dear life
But alas the wind was just too strong
Tugging and pulling at the leaf
Till off he blew with the wind
The leaf cried out in fear
But as he opened his eyes a new world he saw
Through the rollercoaster ride upon the wind
The leaf began to see the world he never knew
He saw a world he never took the time to know
Flying up and down, round and round
He began to see those he had always looked down upon
And as the wind began to die down
The leaf slowly descended back to the ground
From way down there he looked up and longed for his old home
He longed to be playing in the wind again
But there he lay on the ground
His once red colour now gone
He put down his head to rest
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 6:34 AM UTC
165
A Wounded Deer—leaps highest—
I’ve heard the Hunter tell—
’Tis but the Ecstasy of death—
And then the Brake is still!
The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!
Mirth is the Mail of Anguish
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And “you’re hurt” exclaim!
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we're aboard the bus
me and Gus
me and Gus
we're aboard the bus
we're going to West Avenue
to throw a few punches
in the gym with Stu
we're going to West Avenue
to throw a few punches
in the gym with Stu
Stu is a great puncher
his punches are accurate
his left hook
knocks other dudes
really flat
Stu has them dudes
well ironed out on the mat
Stu has them dudes
well ironed out on the mat
us guys on the rough side of town
have to know how to solidly punch
to knock those gang members down
those gang members
are tough and mean
they are the toughest and meanest
gang members
on the rough side of town
Gus and I
are going to take
those gang members on
take them on
take them on
they aren't going to give
Gus and I
no knock out gong
no knock out gong
Gus and I
will have a retinue of punches
to plant on their noses
they'll be redder
than a bunch of roses
Gus and I
get aboard the bus
to go Stu's gym
we're learning
punching skills
off him
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement-day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worm drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening. . . .
“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”
So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”
And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
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It was 4am and Bill bit me
My two arms soar and itchy,
I awoke in discomfort which quickly turned into anxiety and anger
Scratching to ease my pain which temporary ceased
Thoughts of my life, work and my insecurities burned to my attention
God **** Bill! I sighed, he's awaked my anxieties too early
Seething now, feeling redder and redder I wondered why Bill didn't let me be
Id had enough and got up to apply some lotion
Slowly my pain began to soothe and I drifted away
Awake now at 9am
Somewhat calmer, my insecurities still present but other thoughts present too
I ponder on what lotions I can use
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 3:55 AM UTC
We aren't keepers anymore.
They've stopped taking us home to meet their mothers.
They mask our names with cute little lies in their cell phones.
They take us out, but only after dark,
when we disappear into the walls
and camouflage into the bar stools.
With every drink, our eyes dance darker,
our lashes grow longer,
our lips flush redder,
our hair flies wilder,
our hips swing looser,
our nails dig deeper.
We leave the Madonnas alone in their wicker beds,
fading smaller into the back of their minds,
as we slowly take over.
With our foreheads kissing theirs
and their lips brushing ours,
for the night, the Madonnas are the ones that meant nothing to me, baby.
For the night, they're ours forever.
For the night, they will never let us go.
We almost forget that in the morning,
we aren't keepers anymore.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 2:57 AM UTC
with one, a tree - short, with leaves of a redder *** than what belong to me,
with another, a road is carried - long, seeming to never end as one step leads to another, tumbling over itself,
with the fortunate, a lantern - hanging from a pole in suspension from the window of my car,
with my unfortunate gnome, a sign - bearing the words I am in a way to force others to Obey the word of my god.
Jan 5, 2015
Jan 5, 2015 at 4:17 AM UTC