THE POEMS THAT GOT ME SILENCED AT THE NATIONAL COLLEGE SLAM

SPEAKSTERS

All rise and bow and kneel
Another Spokesman of Mass Appeal
Has hopped atop the concert stage
To open up his Holy Rage.

“We shall all … or should all … or would all
Love ‘love’ if we could only
Free ourselves from too much freedom
And the uneasiness of ease.

“Please, examine your hearts!
Your fizziness is a problem.
Too many bubbles. Carbonation
Is the creation of the machinations

“Of pseudo love percolations that brew
Into hate defamation pointing a finger
At every population except its own
Backyard of not so many hard knocks

“As them who do the dish-washing
And the baby walking  
And the tree trimming.
Hey, how is it that you got time

“To be in the spotlight spinnin’
Groove after groove of poor me
When most folks I know
Who ain’t got time for what they need

“Drag their dumb souls along daily
In drab little circles of no time getting’ nowhere.
Not one minute
For capital A Art
 
“Unlike fashion-hip celebrities
From every ethnic dimension
On the screens selling ‘realness’
Products from stretch limousines.

“Hey, I guess, duplicity don’t just
Propagate from Capital Hill.
You fill your pockets
Pretty swell, don’t ya?

“But don’t get me wrong.
I’m as slick as all of ya
Throwin’ down the blah blah
For the bling bling

“Preachin’ to the choir,
Askin’ everyone to fill out
A pledge card cause I
Don’t want you to forget

“That a phat percentage
Of Tonight’s take
Goes to the Rainbow Word Out
Peace Tribe Foundation!

“For I am Ultimate Poetics,
Spokesman of Mass Appeal
Puttin’ it down
Authentic!”

OLD WHITE GUY WHITEY

She called me old
Which I am.
Got that way over time.
White I was born with,
If you can call it that.
Closer to mud I’d say
Red-white.
Brown in the summer.
Inky on the inside.
Bloody.

But she called me
White guy whitey
Twice.
Old to boot.
And then a third time.
Soon a fourth.
Everyone laughed.
It was funny.
Funny to be sitting there
Taking it.

Old white guy whitey.
A sugar cube in someone’s joke.
Responsible for a mountain of dark deeds.
Different, I guess, from all the other colors.

DETENTION CENTER                                  

Somewhere, while we speak, while we sip our coffee Boston in the cabarets and cafes discussing the issues of freedom and restraint, art and liberty -- somewhere, in the third world, a father, separated from family and friends, stands facing a concrete wall.
He hears his son cry out,

Poppy!

And hammers a dark spot with a red fist, his soul trying to rip itself free from body to fly around the wall, to go through it, to break it down.

Poppy!

The man is any man. The circumstances of such a life as his we've been lucky to avoid. We cannot know him. We cannot understand him. We can only imagine how his soul erupts in his throat, tears at his mind, flexes the flesh and fiber of his useless muscle. We can only imagine his forehead pressed against the aggregate, knocking against the concrete wall, in a room of concrete walls, in a room of fathers aggregated together, pressed into circumstances, hearing their children cry out:

Poppy!

Our discussions are important. Our concern is real. But as we sip the black anger of our comfortable homes, milking the repression of our easy existence, stirring the sweet and sour soundings of our still free voice into teacup whirlpools of angst and depression, somewhere, in the third world, a man stands facing a concrete wall pounding his fist raw against the hopelessness unable to do what he must do, unable to be, unable to free his soul to fly around the wall, to go through it, to break it down.

Poppy

The cry is not of a nation. The cry is not of one breed above another or one thought over the rest or one god more god than all the gods it would suppress. It is the cry of any son who needs his father, of any woman who must suckle her young, of any life that needs to live free. And as we sip our coffees and swill our beers watching our leisure hours dissipate into dull days of disappointment having become too self-absorbed and sophisticated to believe in the nobility of dreams once dreamed when lips cried out with ideal passion,

Poppy!

As we espresso our abstractions against imagined barriers, somewhere, in the third world, a man, a woman, separated from family and friends, stand facing a concrete wall hearing the children they cannot save cry:

Poppy!

OTHER POEMS

  Daddy-O on the Patio 

The pensive Daddy-O, cool on the patio,            
        Stares at the silver moon
Blowin’ out a why?
But the silver moon laughs
        Dancin’ with the dipper spoon
Says, “Nobody’s gonna catch
The spirit in the sky.”

    What the hell does that mean?
 
Roll your depressions           
        Into a dark wooly blanket.
Take ‘em to the river
        And let ‘em slip right in.
I’m boppin’ on the wavelengtH
        Of a crazy new vibration
Of something so obvious
        It’s always ever been.

    Huh?

Is it sugar? Is it cocaine           
        Is it a needle in your arm?
Is it a haiku or a sonnet?
        Or a pleasant little farm?
Can you taste it? Can you touch it?           
        Does it make you seem to glow?
Has it always been a part
        Of your inner-spinning soul?

      don’t know.

But the pensive Daddy-O, cool on the patio,
        Stares at the silver moon
Blowin’ out a why?
And the silver moon laughs
        Dancin’ with the dipper spoon
Says, “Nobody gonna catch … nobody’s gonna catch …
            Nobody’s gonna catch
            The spirit in the sky.”