Nina's Blues

- Cornelius Eady

 

Your body, hard vowels

In a soft dress, is still.

What you can't know

is that after you died

All the black poets

In New York City

Took a deep breath,

And breathed you out;

Dark corners of small clubs,

The silence you left twitching

On the floors of the gigs

You turned your back on,

The balled-up fists of notes

Flung, angry from a keyboard.

You won't be able to hear us

Try to etch what rose

Off your eyes, from your throat.

Out you bleed, not as sweet, or sweaty,

Through our dark fingertips.

We drum rest

We drum thank you

We drum stay.

from Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems. Copyright 2008.

Saturday Farmer'a Market - Spring is On the Way!

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

Take heart, my friends.

Perhaps the groundhog isn't all knowing.

There is Spring happening all over my garden right now, with promise of more to come.
 


The Sedum has about doubled in size from last year, and it is covered in little buds

Although there is a fair amount of pinkish red color on the plant, the flowers will bloom in an exuberant yellow color.

This is the first of my Daffodils to bloom. The rest are coming up a few at a time.  

And here, among what has been the scourge of my front garden since I puled out the grass, is some very happy Trailing Rosemary.

I've been cursing this as a sort of clover for years, but I recently discovered that it is actually Wood Sorrel.

It is still an invader in my garden, but at least now it is a correctly identified invader.

And the Rosemary doesn't seem to mind in the least at this point.








Here is a Purple Iris getting ready to open . . .

                                           Like her big sister

California Poppies are coming up every where.

And last, but by no means least, are the Oriental Poppies I put into the grass bed last year. They actually started blooming just after Christmas.

The garden still looks generally overgrown and abandoned, but there are spots of beauty everywhere and it gives me hope for the year to come. I know that I will never again be able to work it as I once did, but I don't think it will mind.

The Little Garden
- Amy Lowell

A little garden on a bleak hillside
    Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow
    Lies far into the spring. The sun’s pale glow
Is scarcely able to melt patches wide
About the single rose bush. All denied
    Of nature’s tender ministries. But no, —
    For wonder-working faith has made it blow
With flowers many hued and starry-eyed.
    Here sleeps the sun long, idle summer hours;
Here butterflies and bees fare far to rove
    Amid the crumpled leaves of poppy flowers;
Here four o’clocks, to the passionate night above
    Fling whiffs of perfume, like pale incense showers.
    A little garden, loved with a great love!

from: A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, Copyright 1912.

Black Boys Play the Classics

- Toi Derricotte

 

The most popular “act” in

Penn Station

is the three black kids in ratty   

sneakers & T-shirts playing

two violins and a cello—Brahms.   

White men in business suits

have already dug into their pockets   

as they pass and they toss in   

a dollar or two without stopping.   

Brown men in work-soiled khakis   

stand with their mouths open,   

arms crossed on their bellies   

as if they themselves have always   

wanted to attempt those bars.   

One white boy, three, sits

cross-legged in front of his

idols—in ecstasy—

their slick, dark faces,

their thin, wiry arms,

who must begin to look

like angels!

Why does this trembling

pull us?

A: Beneath the surface we are one.

B: Amazing! I did not think that they could speak this tongue.

from Tender. Copyright 1997.

skinny-dippin’ in the gene pool

- Thulani Davis

 

the streets of hell are also paved

with fear of contagion

I have been swimming

in enough barbed-wire waters to know

you’re not even safe on the beach

it’s not just your “body fluids”

it’s the grime of your skin

those dirty things you think

they are cleaning up the world again

I can see the inflammation

heartbreak & hunger scurry me down

on the road to Damascus

I want to be blinded like Saul

for the sake of vision

not just cause I can’t take it anymore

are we talking burnt out here?

burnt out is a reason for infection

I hope I get the whole disease

I am glad to be a speck / a piece of dirt

the dark side of the earth

they’re trying to clean

I want to get in their pores

want them to sweat my filth

the way a wound hurts before the dope

but then come the murderers on the road

are we talking burnt out?

they go in the camps looking for you

cause you are hiding the sores

you could be contagious

after all in the postapocalypse movies

you don’t even exist

your survival is not required

for history or hollywood

in the movie Road Warrior

everyone is antisocial on purpose

human ties are burnt out

& human intercourse is fatiguing & dangerous

gratefully no one is traumatized anymore

& unfortunately no one goes to school

in the movie Blade Runner

almost everyone lives 90 stories below

almost no one else

everyone is antisocial by accident

due to overcrowding in L.A. but no one minds

& there are still parties to go to

everyone white is “off-world” more or less

everyone 90 stories down is polymorphous colored

more or less

no one has attended school in decades

in both films everyone dresses with panache

which preserves their identities

to audiences who know

there is no grounds for indentity

postworld

personally I prefer the people in Titanic

even though they got their minds blown

when the unbelievable happened

they still believed in life

they were not burnt out

& had grounds for clinging

to lifeboats and a certain

stylish way of dressing

they could not imagine Jim Jensen

intoning without horror

that the body count goes on

that no one needs the news to know

what’s going on

Beirut is one of the low levels

Dante went on about

available in ordinary life

see the corpses if you will

believe at the risk

you may see it everywhere

every body spreads infection

unless you burn it out

eyewitness news invites you

to wait for the coverage

because Jim Jensen is there

& history is in the making or

you can come skinny-dip

in my gene pool

the massacres were arbitrary

when my people were hunted down

the deaths still go on

stretching over centuries

of shades of brown

baptist, moslem,

mothers, children, fathers

burnt out of homes but living

I am not that desperate

to be numb & dumb

I’m walking 90 stories down

I know I survive

in some wretched moments

of what men do

but I am not that desperate

I don’t give a shit if this is history

in the making

it should stop

I am still alive

I am still happy to be the dirt

that can’t be cleaned up

scorch my earth & I will grow

from history up

under the feet of the present

burnt out is for the movies

in which we don’t exist

from: Playing the Changes 1985.

won't you celebrate with me

- Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

from: Book of Light. Copyright 1993. 

I, Too

- Langston Hughes

 

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

from: Collected Poems. Copyright 1994.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Listening To A White Man Play The Blues

- Silvia Curbelo

 

Pushing the seed into the ground

isn't enough. Whatever blooms

in this place is dumb and blind.

Foreclosure is a one-eyed man.

Nothing falls from a sky like this

except a little rain, never enough rain.

All night my wife looks down

the neck of my guitar

passing the bottle back and forth

like a story she's been telling for years.

So many baskets of hard bread.

You take the shovel to the ground.

The land stares back at you.

The corn drifts towards the sky.

You don't know what dirt is

until you bury your first daughter.

from: The Secret History of Water. Copyright 1997.