Tag Archives: Poems

“A Poem that Ends in Love” by S.K. Rolle

28 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in African American, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, SK Rolle

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creation4

I am a black poet

I claim Nikki Giovanni
4 albums, gospel choirs,
ego-tripping all

Invictus
Out of the night
that covers me…

I claim the church
black and white
Holy Ghost and Methodist

I’ve got to claim
The Bible

Genesis
And Psalms

Solomon
And Revelations

I claim the music
Jesus and Porgy

I claim Sunday
And all the mornings
that come

I claim the drummers
And the singers
The rhythm setters
And the beat keepers

The footstompers
And the handclappers

The signifiers
And the silent criers

Both my grandmothers
And my mother

And Miss Hicks and
Miss Ruffin

I claim the Slab Town
Convention
Arriving on the Pea Vine Line

I claim Paul Robeson

And James Weldon Johnson

I claim Paul Lawrence Dunbar
I claim Langston Hughes

I claim Maya
And Gwendolyn
And Lucille
And Sonia

I’m claiming the fact
And the fiction

I’m claiming
The Color Purple
This Blue Body
And the Bluest Eye

The two Toni’s
And the two Walkers

For My People, Everywhere

Baldwin
Nina Simone

‘Cause they all
Made me come in
From the void

Into the universe of hues
Into the dreamed whirl

I’ve got to claim
The heavens

I’ve got to claim
The trees

The maples and the oaks
The spreading chestnut
The weeping willow

And
Water

Oh my, water
Magic elixir

And
Birds

No way one could begin to name
The flock the feather

And light

And hate

And love

I claim love

“Gulls Aloft” by Ted Hughes

21 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Ted Hughes Poems

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seagull2

From Collected Poems for Children (Faber & Faber 2005 — https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571215027-collected-poems-for-children.html)

***

Gulls are glanced from the lift
Of cliffing air
And left
Loitering in the descending drift,
Or tilt gradient and go
Down steep invisible clefts in the grain
Of air, blading against the blow,

Back-flip, wisp
Over the foam-galled green
Building seas, and they scissor
Tossed spray, shave sheen,
Wing-waltzing their shadows
Over the green hollows,

Or rise again in the wind’s landward rush
And, hurdling the thundering bush,
With the stone wall flung in their faces,
Repeat their graces.

Poetry Workshop

07 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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I brought my poems; ears to
hear theirs.

I was so excited, grateful to have
a moment free of care…

Dance, poem!  Songs sung
singing praise like David, living
life sounding songs like David,
the phone rings like I did, God
and truth abound the blatant
sound of songs sung, singing
praise like David.

Dance, poem!  Freely made,
the words are for you, forced
through, woke up with you
after prayers answered they
ganged up and tackled you.
Higher powers than us are at
play, if good.

Be whatever, but let it all waver
in the up and down sometimes
thing, sometimes flavor, the dream
let it sizzle, this is something we
can savor.  Music claims to improve
us, words and I infused with rhythm
anyways, so why not?

Why not go that last step, grab
a guitar and go?

“Enough is as good as a feast,”
said Poppins before she left the
nursery.  Left for the park, Michael
and Jane convinced that cleaning
was fun, the games just begun,
words, haven’t you heard like the
wave of a wand, magic.

Toast from loaves from rocks
to roll, water from whine, it’s
now half past time to pack it up
and begin again, mid-flow, give
no more…

***

“No folks, there will be no poems
today.  We have on the schedule,
as you can plainly see:

A Poetry Workshop, with Dr. and
Mrs. XYZ, experts each, doing the
experting…”

The end of freedom.  Hope for the
day jolted.  Conforming itself the halt
on what I love, so I left.  Found my
rhythm again, know there are no
poetry experts but dreams and wind,
things we cannot catch

but put them down on paper anyway.

The Mass of Things

16 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Gratitude, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Universe

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The sky with earth, clouds keeping
it tight, swirling day and night.

I did none of this, but responded
when made with breath and…

Thanks.

***

The mass of things that made us;
the sign of times that create us—

Songs sung in gratitude for the chance
to dance, wide open or by the fire
of a closing stance,

no breaks for the wild world, only
thanks for the mighty swirl,

those things—all of them—I did not
do to deserve life.

It was given, a simple gift; we walk
by the river or lake, must seek a good
life to make it great,

True brilliance not from me but
grabbed after pausing, lending
children a hand, starting a new band,

whatever I with God on a daily
schedule think to make.

It doesn’t always go my way, but
smiles happen when I anyways
Thank.

Gratitude is the key to health, and
when we speak health we receive
it, ask Mary Baker Eddy or better
yet the positive prolific poet
named Ella Wheeler Wilcox!

Hers are gems for the man or
woman trying to find their child
inside.

The way to heaven not for men
and women but girls and boys.

You’re eighty years old?  Where are
your toys?

Smile and play, now!  Thank what you
thank, and pray thanks for now!

We did not do this!

We did not put this mass of things
together, but the wise among us
know how to thank for it;

So thank Something for it, make
a great day happen—forget the rest!

Sing a song that’s within from heaven
to your chest!

Give your life to a higher Power,
I call it God, you call it what you will;

to disagree with trifles is a bore,
and to smile and have fun is best.

The Power of Lo—Sex

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Earth, Higher Power, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Sex

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Jesus.

That’s the word certain nerds
use to calm down, back up, and
think, they do it with tone, sometimes

represented in writing with italics.

Thank God for spit, it keeps coming,
the male sex instinct is X, the women’s
is Y, why we’re off sometimes because
X is cross and Y is open and vice versa,

then one day the bomb explodes!

You cannot control Sex.

I imagine the eunuch tries, but
sperms game to swim swim a wild
ride!

God, or Life, or Nature—or whatever
power you observe as King—made the
thing go and go and go without relenting!

Sex is like the universe itself, kind of
unknown, stark one moment, pounding
the next, black holes explored the
crevasse of stink, the stank thing you
thought by holding back, comes back like
an avalanche a day later, or in the

middle of the night, holding tight, you

cannot stop the flood, the bursting
of the dyke.

***

Few!  Few are those who can manage
the power, the pulse, the growth,
the manufacturing of eggs and life
forever spinning like the planets
around far off suns, mirroring ours
in a game of loss and won.

Truth is as truth does, and so at
break of day—play!

Then we head with conviction, we
hope to a setting arc, words and
images, sounds and sweat abound

until it stops.

If we were true to our five senses
we get a sixth, peace of mind
finding us at the end of long, well-
lived, singing rhyme.

Doesn’t mean we can make our
bodies stop, they keep going and
going, the energizer god of sex
not a bunny per se, but then again

they boink a lot, or so they always
say.

False Gods

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Education, God, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Shootings

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Teachers and students are targets
because we have fallen for a great
lie:

That schools are good.

That schools will help a person
become “successful,” the modern
word for Heaven—

spirituality kicked out of modern
life, more and more.

God is being kicked out of politics,
schools, and even churches that
tout public prayer as good—despite
the teachings of Christ, who touted
private prayer.

Shopping centers and malls,
concrete and asphalt mixed with
high buildings to trap us and block
us from the glory of unfettered
Nature.

We construct cages of learning,
worship and living, separate
ourselves from Creation, celebrate
our human abilities and “Oh,
aren’t we neat,” then—in a panic
of lost peace of mind…

A disgruntled student shoots
through all barriers, acts out to
feel something, and tears down
our walls of Babel in multiple
gruesome murders of innocent,
unarmed people.

Walls within walls, the shots tear
town walls.

Inside the walls, if not dead himself,
the shooter feels now.

Feels regret.

And a poet wonders why he still
lives in a modern city.

Xenophobe

09 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Immigration, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Political Satire, Race, Racism, Satire, Xenophobia

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Let’s stick together, fend off
the other.

We used to be an “other” long ago,
but not me that was my
progenitor, not me—let’s go!

I’d rather be dead than caught
in the web; liberal diversity’s not
for me, I’m a Christian, just
the type who’s white, ticked
and armed, so back off.

Someone once challenged my
right to kill.  They were invading
my house, so I had to defend, but
in the army learned that shooting
for the torso of a human was
defending so killed him.

One must defend one’s family—
which is everything.  Blood relations,
keeping America white.

They say this was native American
before it was white European but I
kinda’ think that’s Fake News.

I ignore God when I want to
and cheer at Liberals’ defeat,
this is a war and I wanna win so
let’s kill as much as we need to
let’s win.

Stop ‘em at the border, kill
‘em if we must, build a wall,
Jews will not replace us.  Divide
and conquer’s not the devil’s
line—Believe Me!!

Let’s go to the rally!  Are you going?

So much winning; I love it
how we won all those wars.

Vietnam was fake news, we won
that too!

Kennedy had it coming, I love
CIA movies and their covert ops,
I wish I could take one now,
see all those babies separated from
their mothers at the border,
I’m Christian but the kind that
likes White Jesus, and sick
of the politically correct brown
one they cook up downtown
in what will become a sanctuary
city if we don’t spread Trump
fever fast and build that damn
wall!

“Terrorism”

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Crime, Criminal Law, Law, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Tao

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is a myth.

We’re trying to group and organize
our thoughts and conditions,
what racists do to keep things easy.

Brand a group or situation “X.”

Mark the spot of a crime “Y.”

The devil loves conflation, combining
and confusing, hates when we make
decisions, loves when we lump and
generalize.

Declare something “Good” or “Evil?”

Judge not lest ye be judged was not
a religious statement, but true.

Ask not what your country can do
for you, but what you can do for
your country was not political but true.

It’s a tragedy when murder happens,
but does it help to label the evil with
further labels like “terrorism” or
“terrorist act?”

Evil is evil, wrong is wrong, and to go
further to categorize is to welcome
a slew of lies.

Muslims.  “Radical Islam” are terms
born from these lies, we start witch
hunts against a group instead of fighting
the evils inside your own heart.

Gandhi was right, in part, and at the
time of his murder was a great voice
for peace.  (why he was killed)

Did terrorism kill him?

Irrelevant, your honor, it was wrong,
unfortunate, and God shall punish
all such acts, where God could be:

Good
Orderly
Direction,

a Higher Power, or just good
common sense.

A good fence.  The neighborhood in
check, my mind and body in balance
because I prayed first,

then acted.

Or did nothing—the spiritual way
of the Tao.

Aloe

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Nature, Overcoming, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Strength

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I can’t remember the last time I
saw my green ivy, up the walk
along the steps, the rocks of
my entry, smiling saying “hello.”

One night a neighbor sprayed
poison on them, ‘cause that’s
where I live!  Los Angeles, the city,
“civilization” without sidewalk
security,

litter on the streets.

Crime and lack of care, but
there… There we are, finances
have you where you are for now,
trying to make the best of what is…

There were a couple aloe cacti
on the rocks, as well—and when the
ivy died, taking away my green,
the aloe grew, started to take over.

Something there is that doesn’t
love ivy-killing spray, rises up
in the fray, becomes the ship staying
the course in the spray—

they tell you to walk away, to
not see your uncle buried at
Arlington with full honors but
you go anyway.

The orange of the flower replaces
the green of ivy goodness, as we return
home every day.

The hate cannot steal the hope and
its neverending growth and ray,
the devil a coward when you call him
out, then Decide.

Ahh, he hates a decision as you
stay your own path against the tide.

Self-doubt, used to be their shouts,
you block it out and advance on
heaven, a narrow walk for only
certain, chosen soldiers who look to
left and right, even dangerously behind
to help another onto the trail
before we die triggering eternal life.

Aloe Vera is tougher than the poison
as is to death life.

The Dragon’s Back

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in God, Mystical, Nature, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Wales, Welsh

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Sexuality swirls around the planets,
a kind of erratic, organized chaos of
life we cannot see unless by great
effort and powerful lens.

Beneath the surface of things,
the duck’s feet fight and pound and
move, often unconsciously—beating
eggs like water polo players perpetually.

Walking is a thing; we are wise to find places
for feet on ground, to get out
of civilization’s attempt to comfort
and protect against elements—

The dragon’s back, scaly and strong,
unstable and challenging, the smoke
rising off the water at sunset, the
Lady of the Lake guarding underneath,

offering help for the helpless, but
only when you are humble and ask.

Songs true and off the horizon of
the green, valleys fog over and wet,
the rain and clouds lifting the flower
from the hill, wars fought to appease

the up and down movement of the Chinese
Tao, the Russian doll, the Native American
Great Spirit expressed in Mothers and Fathers
honored in the beast.

We are talking animals, bucked by time
and nature when acting right or wrong—
it’s just that the Righteous get bucked
amidst peace of mind’s post-rain bow.

I dream of a return to land to my east,
a Celtic field in a Welsh storm, the
dragon’s back never more evident
than on the cliffs of England.

400 years in a foreign land is nothing
to the man who plants.  Sunshine and
rain feed the soul here as others,
a song to sooth here as much as there—

The dragon can buck all he wants,
but when the mind is rooted in the Quest
he cannot move the soul bound for heaven,
where heaven is Peace,

Something only achieved through
warring against temptation and winning,
not because we are great, but because
the tools at our feet are there, and we

humble ourselves enough to pick them
up and use them.  Or not.

Our mind’s eye sees all truths, before
words, so we utter a growl, breathe
and stop.

I am the dragon.