Am I a sick man?

as I lived on a hibiscus shrub
Many rooms, long and short
Many face vividly coloured
with a beauty of sadness
grafted on a nameless rootstock

Am I an unattractive man?

as I lived like a petal in the sun
perfect for bees and butterflies
and the visitors; oh day! oh night!
as for me, time danced on a maypole around my dreamy garland head

Am I a spiteful man?

as I've counted all 3863 days, 1 by 1
that I lived on that hibiscus shrub
without a flight to my fantasies
Since then, I'm thrown underground
here I live like a ridiculed mouse

Do you know me, Dostoevsky?

This isn't news
It's Newport News
It makes you dance

Bill Bailey

And the moon walks
from sweet Virginia
never from Neverland

Bill Bailey

The first flight
In Apollo
blew up the night

Bill Bailey

Call it what you want
You can't walk on the moon
without the backslide

Bill Bailey

People said she's so... great
I had to see for myself... bait

and I saw what they said
and I am fond of it

She said she's so...concupiscent
I had to see for myself... contentment

and I felt what she had said
and I am fond of it

I said she's so... enticing
I had seen for myself... volatile

and I experienced for myself what I said
and I am all alone

Some may say:
It is missing something!

Indeed, some have said:
This is incomplete!

Look:

these stones lay
gray with lifelessness
gray as the clouds gathering
over his graphite city

such oddity of geometry
peculiar buildings with
perpendicular lines
raising parallel paradigms

and the unpainted sun
casts awkward shadows
across the gray stones -
empty sidewalks -
devoid of colours
devoid of life
devoid of people

Yes, where are the people?

but to critique my art

Feather light words exhumed
heavy as Mussolini's clock
coo coo times, chimes
and a fascist bird sings;
sweet and succinct

Taken as is
might slight delight
The vitiation of words
in the phrases
Petals dead on a wet, rotted bough

Let me live
for this is where I am
beneath my father's tree:
eternal and heavenly shade

Let me live
and I will gaze
across the vast ocean
of memories to you

You see
for you life plays
this sweet song

you must humble
you must listen
to the end
the silence

silence brings you
these tears for me
and sadness you feel
the death of my memory

Yet you know me
as I have lived

So let me live
in you
in your fondest memories

Let me live
as I have lived

Anthony J Pierre
July 16, 2021

Its eighteen months since her delivery
Now she is penning odes ostensibly
Crayons in both hands: she is standing tall
What Dada says? "No writing on the wall."

With great care baby writes her graffiti
Not much untouched by her audacity
He tries to compromise with a new book
but baby says, "Daa Daa"; with a stern look

He has to admit the walls are hers now
Filled with scribbles and a chromatic cow
Its her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night
without the stars; a novice oversight

She's more surreal than Salvador Dali
The writing's on my wall: Pure Graffiti

Born to a culture
common its faith
of shallow waters
schooled in this trait

Great motion of tides
ebbs most to modal tasks
like sand on beaches
the future's unmask

but without notice
some dove deep in fears
for comfort n solace
swam away with years

In the darkest of waters
a home made for few
where hope is deep
a new species grew.

I knew you
needed this
sincere apology
to pull yourself
together

but you
had to be broken

so I could
keep myself
in one piece

Through contemplation,
the mind leaps to its haven
above reason's gaol

Every knight swords
A razor sharpened tip
To pare into the souls
Of their many subjects

Sir Very Special Naipaul
An august knight was he.
His felt-tipped glaive
Donned in ink stained valour

It cuts, this sword, above all
Deep into the mind
Bending, shaping its stream
Of understanding

Every knight who swords
A razor sharpened end
Must pen into our hearts
The most noble trend

It's a treasure trove
Words tossed up like confetti
Falling in our hearts

In the weirdest turn of events that day
As a cop toting guns and pepper spray
I gathered an urge to pen my first ode
In my lunch hour, before hitting the road

To sirens and light of my precinct's space
not a stanza wrote, yet my mind's apace
the pen's the problem; confidence recede
Pondered a visit to a friend, indeed

Thoughtful I'm moving, this old clue I'd act
on Brooklyn's pen thief; kleptomaniac
acquired from him, an ink dipping quill
of Huia birds, still boxed with its bill

Case solved; on the back of the bill it hints
"Dear Mayor, pen's for poems; lead's for thugs."

Getting nowhere!

One whole Earth
round and flat

Here's a balloon
Here's a plate

Reminds me
to celebrate with

An oblate pear
on steroids and
a flat Greek cake

A stupendous combination

Let scarlet feathers go
as love does exiled too
One hundred leagues
One hundred Roman feet
One hundred prosody

For Augustus' dreams
condemns me treacherously
and I cannot breathe
Each gasp for life is death
Each death a new stanza

Let scarlet feathers go
as love does in exile, too
across white cloudy fields
beneath the asphalt sea
Let scarlet feathers go free

One thousand six hundred and sixty six
none: a salesman, a noble, or a cook
Macabre swam the sea of ****** Bay
In a fleet, the Dutch, French and Britsh he took

A crimson tide soaked the sand to a stain
Great reefs, he made, floating stench of maim
The more Macabre swam for lust of pain
More life, to the vast ocean floor, he claim

Now, three hundred and twenty three years on
Under a full moon in the depth of night
He, Macabre, still swims a ****** Bay
In search of an undaunted soul to fight.

I bought a bird
A singing bird to sing
The bird was a robin
I named him Robin

Robin was not communist
Robin was not socialist
He was an American
An American robin

Robin was not gay
Robin was not straight
He was a singing bird
A singing robin

Robin was not a Muslim
Robin was not a Christian
He was just a regular robin
A bird that I called Robin

But, this little bird
never sang a single song

He was not a mute
He could sing
He was free to sing anything
He chose not to sing his tune

So for me
Robin's silence was deafening

Hello... Poetry
It has been some time
since I've enjoyed you
as my company

There's a special joy
on a rain-filled night
to probe this site
with the cadence of ebony and ivory

Hello... my friend
would you mind a glass
red wine....Cabernet, Amarone
best yet, some Long Island tea

Such a pleasure filled mood
as my thoughts protrude
these splendid dictates
both old and new

So long, my esteemed friend
until we next meet
when I can repeat to you
Hello again...Hello Poetry

Slave of briers courts
regal, purple, velvet robe
Picture perfect rose

I set my sight far on China
abacus counting; without confusion
But they're mostly short sighted
and that's no delusion

Heard about the Hong Kong march
but didn't recall till I'd seen what I saw
So I did what I did, now I understood
what I could, with Confucius

Never take a pen to a pig
nor your litter to the swine
for one, H one N one
Can I get myself the Canadian kind?

Import... extort, not for the canola  
nor the coals down under
If I'm selling what I stole from selling Inuit
like the forty thieves and Ali's plunder

How many men can stand as tall
without writing Graffiti on the Great Wall
that they built, that's psychopathic
for the people, by the people, the Great Republic

That grass
isn't that green?

The solitary beat
of a beating heart

The solitary heart
of a heartless man

The solitary man
of a crowded world

The solitary world
of a ludicrous dream

The solitary dream
of hideous music

The solitary music
of incoherent beats

The solitary beat
of a beating heart

We all friends in Earth's society
No reason to start quaking
The Society of Friends are friends
The Quakers aren't shaking

No Quaking in Rome?
Nor the Sistine Chapel?
Black smoke, White Hope
White smoke, Black Pope

Does this seem dope? Just wait,
White State, Black Faith
Black State, White Fate
The impossible a possibility and a dope bomb

Start with a Quake, make a Quaker
If its a shake, make a shaker
Where's his taker of notes
penned at the Apostolic Nunciature

He heard a friend tell a friend's friend
Its getting late; confess your faith
If you ain't straight, you'll be left by the gate
near the wall with the writing

No thunder nor lightning
while I AM walking and all
In the city of the Monk
Graffiti: Writing on the Wall

You think
you had enough, Silly?
It's a love song

Let us go
You and I
Where the music
Makes you high
Like patients etherized

What's wrong with that?

They will come
They will go
Speaking of Macca de Angelo

Tetragrammaton
The apex of poetry
One word says it all

Where do you stand?

For me,
it has never been
black and white

and I won't live
like a new moon
over an old world

masking
your colourful face

Come and see
in the night painted sky
a scattered brilliance
vivid, ever aglow

Take time again to look
at each irrelevant speck
alight tonight
just for you... see

Didn't you notice
the dullest star
no longer shines
as before?

But today, yes today
it radiates more than most

Come and gaze
at the night painted sky
its passing; it is passing
the star inside of me

I'd dreamt of Moshe's fall
In the arid land of Kadesh
And I wondered; how sweet
were those waters of Meribah?

Then, I woke up from sleeping
and was greeted by a nightmare

Rising under an Ethiopian cloud
The Grandiose Renaissance
To tame the mighty blue Nile
To free the wild hearts of men

How I pray tensions fall
In the fertile lands of Africa
as I ponder; how sweet
are these waters of Meribah?

Life's a blooming rose
A special gift to possess
Death's a rose well pruned