Love, Heat and Strength

When Clint looked at his enemies…
When homeless I stayed warm, the keys…
I make my way, strong and proud into
the unknown, searching for and finding
truth under the elm tree.

The difference between the stars
and the sun is the difference between you
and me. Nothing

Soft winds do shake the darling buds of May,
for me a dream in black and white of
antagonists, threatening to steal my peace.

The war is always fought for peace of
mind; we don’t know until we know, and
sometimes it’s after someone dies.

Songs that remember look to rain
showers of love on beauty, sharp stinging
nettles in Maryland whistling Dixie, taking
me back to a day where my last name held
slaves in captivity, persons with blood
related to me.

Now I have brothers of both color, I love
that tweaked song called life that makes rainbows
of mistakes, twists the sky upside down
makes everything a prism, shadows from
trees keeping the sunlight managed into
something we can rightly use.

The blooms? They’re already in bloom,
some would say too impatient the impatiens
requiring little else but water and minerals
this milky substance coming from barrels,
the ocean a tumbling ray biting necks and
cocks and doodle-doo’s, bringing religious
and spoken freedom to the masses, as long
as you say what others want you to say.

We lost our freedom the moment we decided
to breathe. If you don’t anything nice
have to say, scramble your tongue, lock it
up, season it with love and remember:

Good things come, don’t wait, make amends
for all the rhymes I wrote that sounded insane;

Give all you have post-sag into middle age,
remember children and make it better for
them, come out the haze with a flashlight
offer it to them. The world is theirs now,
less and less mine, less and less, be strong:

Love, heat and strength, bring your day
to tomorrow, and watch yesterday grow
into a great today.

We have access to the time machine that
is forgiveness, in it click the numbers, mine
is 1984 when I died.

“The great life this could have been” is
the anthem I cry out in lonely nights
to my lonely lost young friends. Be they
young enough, take hold my words,
give up alcohol, drugs, declare peace
and tell her you love her.