How fun it is
to say again
To repeat the preferred
episodes of my life
over and over.
I remind me
of how wonderful
I have been at times.
Wonderful and happy.
I have had sadnesses,
of course,
but those are now
all by themselves
unnoticed.
There are still the quarrels
in me
over whether time
was wasted .
I think we all have those.
My life is floating timelessly
on the petals of my past.
Memories are all you can ever be.
At my most recklessly honest and envious, I have to accept that my son is my only opportunity to see a future for which I can not last.
With every poem,
there comes
a sad confession
that it is not
a hundred page
novel.
Every black person
freezes me,
at that moment
when I was five
when my mother
is screaming at me,
“Look at what you have done.”
Her favorite vase,
shattered
at my feet
dropped
on the floor.
I can’t lookup.
I can’t put it together.
Something big
is gone forever.
Hurting someone with laughter
makes the hurt forever.
Inequity has no headwater.
It is indelible
and within most lifetimes
only fades a bit.
It is part of life.
A life of balanced hopefulness
is impossible without
first digesting fully this truth.
We have built Gods, laws, and political parties
to correct inequality
and when these always fail to satisfy us,
we turn on each other.
Many in disappointment
spend all their time sawing away despondently
at the very limbs they are sitting on.
Only personal happiness voids nature of her cruelty.
You needed a slave.
And I was handy.
To clear your conscious,
about what you had done
you let me die in your Civil War.
I believed it was about me.
I stepped up for the white World Wars
because I thought I was free.
I gave you willing millions.
You dragged me from my home
for Vietnam.
Black skin goes so well
with body bags.
I am there for you when
your kids do drugs.
I go to prison for them.
My children stay home alone,
and you argue about
other people’s children
crying on TV.
So here I am,
Not your slave
now your criminal.
With you, for you
still belonging to you.
You own me.
Do your memories,
cast loose by life’s end
wait bewildered
for you to come back?
Like pets at windows?
I don’t believe God has a firmness of purpose.
Otherwise, you would notice him milling around more often.
I think God gave us his will,
as a going away present.
Share
About wisdom.
I care little.
Is it ever more than drifting
words of easy cleverness
that coax polished behaviors
that barely last a morning.
The priests offer certainty
in return for death.
If this is wisdom,
what then is foolishness?
Birth?
When is wisdom ever a tool?
A utensil for eating life?
I have spent my life
like a child
chasing Easter eggs
hidden behind bushes.
Thrilling at truths
painted in watercolors
that quickly washed away.
Then I found it
in the last place,
I looked.
